startword

Noun

startword (plural startwords)

1. A string of letters that identifies the beginning of a valid sequence in a specified language.
   • In fact, a set of metarules and a set of hyperrules is given whose power exceeds by far this example and only the choice of a specific hyperrule for the startword restricts it to this example.1981, Mathematisch Centrum (Amsterdam, Netherlands) Afdeling Informatica, Report IW - Issues 181-190
   • A variation on this type of normalization consists of using a combination of startword lists and exclusion classes, e.g. remove all comparative adjectives except those in a domain list.1992, Anne Morris -, The Application of Expert Systems in Libraries and Information Centres, →ISBN
2. The first appearance of a genre in print.
   • It was the translation of Ovid, Lucan, Seneca, and Virgil that gave English Elizabethan poetry the startword.1875, THE CORHILL MAGAZINE , VOL XXXII, page 191
   • The attraction of the French romances of chivalry for William Morris, of Tuscan painting for D.G. Rossetti, of the spirit of English Gothic architecture for Christina Rossetti, of the combination of all these with Greek and Elizabethan elements for Mr. Swinburne, were to be traced back to...1926, Richard Garnett, Edmund Gosse, English Literature: From the age of Johnson to the age of Tennyson