Yesterday I showed how you can search by root to find related words in Greek and Hebrew. In response to that post, someone asked if there is an easy way to identify the root of a given word. Indeed there is!
Suppose I’m looking at Genesis 1:1 in Hebrew and I want to know the root of the Hebrew word ראשׁית (“beginning”). If I position my cursor over that word, the following information will appear in the Instant Details box:
Note the word ראשׁ appearing in parentheses to the right of the lexical form. That’s the root of ראשׁית.
Now suppose I want to search for all words derived from that root. I can do that by selecting ראשׁית, then holding down the shift and option keys while clicking the Search button at the bottom of the Resource palette. I could also control- or right-click ראשׁית and choose Root from the Search For submenu of the contextual menu which appears.
Either approach will open a new search window showing every occurrence of every word derived from ראשׁ. To see all the words which were found by this search, click the Details button and look at the Analysis tab:
As you can see, Accordance makes it incredibly easy to identify the root of a given word and search for it.