full text search
compound.compound. a way of searching for information where the computer looks at every single word in a document, not just the title or keywords.
compound. a technique for searching a computer-stored document or database that examines all words in every stored document as opposed to searching only metadata or titles.
I used full-text search to find the specific quote in the book.
The library's new digital archive includes a full-text search feature, allowing researchers to locate specific phrases within thousands of scanned historical newspapers.
Implementing an efficient full-text search requires sophisticated indexing algorithms to ensure that queries return relevant results across massive datasets without significant latency.
A compound formed from the adjective full and the noun phrase text search. The term emerged in the 1960s to distinguish comprehensive document indexing from methods relying solely on metadata or controlled vocabularies.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Often functions as a compound noun or an attributive modifier before another noun.
Last updated July 22, 2026