What is a concordance?

What is a Concordance?

Concordances are general-purpose working tools for the close study of texts, whether the texts are literary, linguistic, historical, religious, philosophical, legal, commercial, or of other kinds.

A concordance is first of all a comprehensive index to a text where every occurrence of every word in the text has an entry in the index. By looking up a word in a concordance you can be certain you have found every instance of that word in the text.

In addition, every instance of each word is shown in an illustrative context, and is provided with a reference to show whereabouts the word (and its context) occur in the original text.

If the words are given with references but no contexts, you have a verbal index instead of a concordance; and if neither references nor contexts appear, you have a wordlist. This program can do both.

Because words are given with their contexts, the concordance makes it easy to compare all the usages of any word in a text or body of writing. This makes possible all kinds of insights into meaning and usage.

See also:
What is a Web Concordance?
Quick Start
Tutorial files