Is there an online dictionary listing words spelled in reverse?

A final "s" in a word is usually pronounced \z\, so it is an interesting that the final "z" in "quartz" is pronounced \s\. (I mention interesting quirks like this to my ESL students.) I was wondering if there were any other instances like "quartz". If an on-line dictionary in ordered by the last letter of the word existed, this would be easy to check for, but the concept of a "reverse dictionary" seems to be limited to the (very useful) idea of going from definition/concept to headword. Searching for "dictionary in alphabetical order by the last letter" didn't seem to get me anywhere, but maybe I haven't searched diligently enough.

Solution 1:

Summary: Try this word list (2.4 MB) I just made.

I don't know of any such dictionaries, but it's easy enough with a little scripting to refashion any dictionary/word-list, available in an accessible electronic format, into what you want.

For instance, this script (in Python)

import sys
words = [w.strip() for w in sys.stdin.readlines()]
words = sorted(words, key = lambda w: ''.join(reversed(w)))
print '\n'.join(words)

run on the word list /usr/share/dict/words that ships with Unix systems gives this word list (2.4 MB). It takes a while to get the hang of looking up words in such a list, of course, because you have to read the words backwards. The string "quartz" occurs as part of words far apart, for instance:

…
propertyless
quartzless
mess
…
ritzy
quartzy
Shortzy
…
waltz
speltz
Fultz
Nantz
chintz
untz
wootz
quartz
biquartz
hertz
bortz
halutz
chalutz

I think what you actually wanted was just a word list rather than a dictionary, but it is also easy enough, equipped with a good free dictionary, to turn it into a dictionary in alphabetical order of the reversed words.

Solution 2:

If you want to find other words like quartz that end in -z, -tz or -rtz, there are plenty of websites for Scrabble players and crossword solvers to find such words.

For example:

• http://www.scrabblefinder.com/ends-with/z/
• http://www.scrabblefinder.com/ends-with/tz/
• http://www.scrabblefinder.com/ends-with/rtz/
• http://www.findtheword.info/Search.aspx?stype=ends&sword=z
• http://www.findtheword.info/Search.aspx?stype=ends&sword=tz
• http://www.findtheword.info/Search.aspx?stype=ends&sword=rtz

This gives us words like bortz, hertz, nertz, slivovitz, spritz, ritz, ansatz and kibbutz.

Rather than bookmarking these sites, you can usually just Google for something like ending with z.