[RMOP]

Mike,

Interesting. On my Kindle Android Reader, highlighting any word in any book will also trigger a dictionary lookup and a pop-up definition is then displayed. There's then an option to enter the full dictionary for the larger definition. Doing so then takes you into the the dictionary just as if you'd opened it as a stand-alone book (which can't be done w the built-in dictionary, AFAIK). However, the only available search feature is not restricted to dictionary entries, but rather effects a clueless ramble through the entire text.

Example: a search for "abet" (w/o quotes) yields dozens and dozens of results, nearly all of which are instances of the search string within other words which themselves occur within the text of other definitions: (...forms of a letter of an alphabet or other grapheme.)

Well down in the list the actual dictionary entry for the word "abet" does occur, but only incidental to the broader search and you'd never be able to look up a single word of interest this way. The same behavior, BTW, is displayed when using an external dictionary or encyclopedia.

So, the Kindle hardware can't search for text strings within the body of dictionary definitions but the software can't do anything but that. A bit like Jack Spratt and wife. Clearly, for a dictionary, the search is working properly on the hardware but not the software reader. But, the problem is obviously intrinsic to the software reader itself, not to the book proper. I'll hope that the developers will notice this and fix the reader to conform with convention.