How to use
The dictionary is read through two kinds of page: the search, which is the field at the top of every page, and the entry page, with the entry in the middle, a navigation panel on the left and the two older dictionaries on the right. This guide walks through both. The help icon beside the search field repeats the search syntax at any time.
1 Navigation pane
The panel on the left of an entry page opens with the entry’s stable LAD number (in green in the picture); pointing at it shows the concordance, the AHw, CAD and eBL entries this one corresponds to. Below the number the panel has three sections: the page navigation, the dictionary navigation and, at its foot, the version.
The navigation pane of the entry gizzu: its LAD number and its three sections.
On a phone the panel is a drawer: the list button at the left of the tab bar opens it, a tap outside or the cross closes it.
Navigation paneTabs: LAD, CAD, AHwThe top of an entry on a phone: the button that opens the navigation pane, and the tabs that switch between LAD, CAD and AHw.
1.1 Page navigation
Page navigation is the table of contents of the entry: it lists the parts of the entry in the order the page shows them: the header, the lexical block, the attestations with their numbered senses, the usage groups, the discussion, the cross-references, the external resources and the authors. A click scrolls to the part; a triangle unfolds the senses or groups below it. What each part holds is described in Microstructure.
The page navigation of gizzu, with the senses under Attestations unfolded.
1.2 Dictionary navigation
The dictionary navigation: the Jump to field, the buttons for search, back to the entry and the saved list, and the entries around the current one.
Under the page navigation the dictionary navigation shows the entries before and after the current one in the order of the dictionary (the Akkadian alphabet, s before ṣ before š), ten each way; scrolling the list takes you further. The current entry is in bold, a deleted one is struck through. Type into Jump to, and the list narrows to the matching entries; the magnifier does the same; the target button returns the list to the current entry; the clipboard button shows your saved list in place of the neighbours (see Saving a search).
With entries on the saved list, the clipboard of the dictionary navigation turns vermilion.
A click on it shows the saved list in place of the neighbouring entries, grouped by the search that found them: here kalbu and kalbatu from en:dog, and gizzu.
1.3 Version
The foot of the navigation panel: the version of the entry and the date of its last change; for a published entry the version is a button that opens the list of versions.
The foot of the navigation panel gives the version of the entry and the date it was last changed. An entry that has not been published yet shows its working number, 0.41, and changes without notice; a published entry starts its numbering at 1.0, and each publication after that is a new version. Once an entry has published versions the version is a button: it opens the list of them, newest first, and each older version is a page of its own at its own address, …/entry/LAD010502?v=3.1, which says which version it shows. The plain address always shows the newest.
On an older version a switch, changes since, compares it with the version before it, or with any earlier one you choose: what the editor wrote when publishing it, then the parts that are new, changed or removed, and the same parts marked in the text of the entry. A version can be cited with its number, as How to cite describes.
2 Search syntax
The search on the home page: the special characters above the field, the help icon, the Search button and the clipboard with its badge.
On every other page the same search stands in the header: the special characters before the field, the help icon, the Search button and the clipboard.
Suggestions appear as you type: headwords and their variants, and entries whose meanings contain the word, in Akkadian or in English. Enter, or a click on the Search button, opens the highlighted suggestion, the first one unless you move the highlight with the arrow keys. Ctrl + Enter (⌘ + Enter on a Mac), or Ctrl + click on the Search button, runs the full search across the whole database instead: headwords, meanings, quotations, translations, notes, and the texts of the AHw and the CAD.
The suggestions for abu: the entry, its part of speech and its meaning; a variant points at its entry with an arrow; the plus at the right saves an entry to your list.
How exactly a word is matched depends on how you write it:
saru- flexible: finds šarru, saru, šāru; diacritics and doubled consonants are ignored
sarru- semi-flexible: finds šarru, ṣarru; doubled consonants count, diacritics are still ignored
šarru- exact: finds šarru only; every diacritic counts
Wildcards stand for what you do not know:
paru- paru itself or words beginning with paru
paru*- words beginning with paru
*paru- words ending in paru
*paru*- words containing paru anywhere
par?- par and any one character
par@- par and any one consonant
par#- par and any one vowel
A prefix limits the search to one field:
en:mule- English meanings only;
de:,fr:andar:the German, French and Arabic ones root:PRʾ- the root (wildcards work here too)
pos:verb- the part of speech
lemma:parû- the headword only, without the variants
variant:alamattu- the variants only
log:ANŠE- a logogram; a word written in capitals,
ANŠE.KUR.RA, is taken as a logogram by itself domain:- a semantic domain; type the colon and the list of domains appears
topic:- the topic of an attestation, in the same way
A LAD number, LAD000131, opens that entry.
The attestations have a search of their own, under the prefix att:. The suggestions then list attestations in the order of the texts, each with its reference, its entry and the meaning; Enter opens the entry at that attestation, Ctrl + Enter lists them all and searches the CAD and the AHw for the plain reference.
att:bib:KAR 158- attestations that cite a text
att:akk:šarrum- the Akkadian of the attestation; diacritics are ignored, so
sarrumfinds šarrum andba-la-tufinds ba-la-ṭu att:tr:king- the translation
att:mus:BM 34160- the museum number; spaces, dots and hyphens are ignored
att:src:ebl- the project the passage is linked to:
ebl,seal,archibab,cal att:period:ob- a period, by the id of the period list (
oakk,ob,mb,sb,nb,lb,oa,ma,na…); a short id takes its sub-periods with it att:lemma:šarrum- the attestations of one entry, by headword or entry id
att:bib:ARM period:ob- fields combine, each narrowing the search further
att:KAR 158- without a field, every field of the attestation is searched
3 Special characters
The buttons for the special characters, before the search field.
The six buttons before the field put the characters of Akkadian transliteration into it without a special keyboard: the first three set a macron (ā), a circumflex (â) or a dot below (ṣ, ṭ) on the letter you have just typed; the other three insert ḫ, š and ʾ. For the flexible search they are not needed at all, since it ignores diacritics.
Index numbers of sign readings can be typed as plain digits; they are rewritten to the usual form when the search is sent:
par2- pár (acute on the first vowel)
par3- pàr (grave on the first vowel)
par4- par₄ (subscript from 4 on;
kalama10gives kalama₁₀) ma-at-nu2- ma-at-nú (in a hyphenated transliteration the number applies to the last sign)
4 Saving a search
The plus beside a suggestion puts the entry on your saved list; the clipboard button beside Search saves the whole current list of suggestions at once, and its badge counts what is saved. The list keeps the search that produced each saving, so that an entry found with de:Vogel is filed under that; an attestation found with att: is saved together with its place, and opens the entry at that attestation. An AHw or CAD suggestion is saved as the LAD entry it is linked to, labelled (AHw) or (CAD).
The clipboard beside the Search button; its badge counts the saved entries, here three.
The saved list is kept in your browser, not on the server, and stays from one page to the next. It is shown in the dictionary navigation of every entry page, with the clipboard button there; each row has a cross to remove it, and the list has a Clear all.
5 Sharing
The share icon in the entry’s header.
The share icon in the entry’s header passes the entry on. On a phone, and in Chrome, Edge and Safari, the system’s own share sheet opens; elsewhere a small menu: copy the link, send it by e-mail, or post it on Bluesky, Mastodon, X or WhatsApp. What is shared is the entry’s permanent address, https://lad.saw-leipzig.de/entry/LAD000131, the same one the citation gives.
6 Download
The download icon in the entry’s header.
The download icon beside it saves the entry as a TEI XML file, abu_1.xml, the same file that the download of the whole dictionary and the API deliver, without the editors’ working notes.
7 Citing
The cite icon, the quotation mark, in the entry’s header.
The quotation mark shows the citation of the entry, LAD abu I, https://lad.saw-leipzig.de/entry/LAD000131, and a click copies it, with the date of access added: (accessed: 8 Oct 2026). For a published version the citation names the version and its own address, LAD parû I, version 3.1, https://lad.saw-leipzig.de/entry/LAD010502?v=3.1. The rule behind it is on How to cite.
8 Dictionary tabs
The right of the entry page of gizzu: its CAD entry and its AHw entry, each in its own column; the AHw column has a tab for each of the three AHw entries the LAD entry corresponds to.
The two columns on the right show the entries of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary and of the Akkadisches Handwörterbuch that the LAD entry is mapped to, as AHw and CAD explains. When an entry corresponds to several entries of one dictionary, a row of tabs stands above the column, one per entry. The AHw is shown in full; of the CAD, only the opening paragraph of each article. The handle between the entry and the columns can be dragged to give either side more room.
The tab bar of a phone: the list button opens the navigation, the three tabs switch between the dictionaries.
On a phone the three dictionaries are tabs above the entry: LAD, CAD and AHw, one at a time.
What each of the two columns shows, and the labels that say how far its text has been checked, is described on the pages AHw and CAD.