Troubleshooting
Most lookup problems have the same handful of causes. Work down this list in order.
"My word returns no results"
- Wrong input scheme — by far the most common cause. The search box matches against a
specific transliteration. An IAST word (
rāma) typed while the box expects Harvard-Kyoto will not match. Re-check the selected input scheme and retype. See Encoding & Transliteration for the scheme table and a worked śiva / kṛṣṇa example. - You typed an inflected or sandhi'd form. Dictionaries are keyed by stem/headword, not by inflected forms. Look up the stem (e.g. gaccha-, not gacchati). For Monier-Williams, the Inflected forms resource maps a form back to its headword.
- Spelling, homonyms, or long vs short vowels. Switch to the L (List) display to browse neighbouring headwords and confirm the exact spelling and any homonym number.
- Wrong dictionary for the word. A Vedic term may be absent from a classical dictionary and vice-versa. See Choosing a dictionary.
- Accents (Vedic). Some Vedic dictionaries (e.g. Grassmann) carry accent marks. If an accented search fails, retry without the accent, or check whether the display offers an accent: no option.
"It matches, but the characters render wrong"
That is the output scheme, set independently of input. Switch the output menu to
deva (Devanāgarī), roman (IAST), or whichever you want to read. Storage is always SLP1;
display is converted on the fly — see Encoding & Transliteration.
"A citation link doesn't open a scanned page"
Not every literary-source citation (<ls>) has been linked to its scan yet — that linking
("Dictionary to Book") is ongoing editorial work. An unlinked citation is expected, not a
bug. See Scans & Print and the
Issue Taxonomy.
"A scan page is blurry, skewed, or missing"
That is worth reporting as a scan-quality issue. See Scans & Print
and Contributing → Overview.
Still stuck?
Check the FAQ, or open an issue on the dictionary's GitHub repository — see Contributing.