Construct a single search query to locate all lexicon records that mean 'bark' (the verb).
Note that it is better to generate a set with some extraneous results than to exclude items that should legitimately be included.
Begin by searching for 'bark' in the ''gloss'' search box: Results (690)
Note that not all instances of 'bark' as a verb have 'v' in the gfn field, so we cannot simply search for 'bark' and 'v'. In order to exclude most of the nouns, we must exclude all records that contain 'n' in the gfn field. This is accomplished by entering 'n' in the gfn search box preceded by an exclamation point (which acts as a Boolean NOT): !n Results (539)
Visually scan for the most frequent glosses to be excluded: those containing 'tree', 'skin'. Construct a query for the ''gloss'' search box that excludes these.
A combination of the exclamation point (=Boolean NOT) and ampersand (&) operator (=Boolean AND) will allow us to match all glosses with 'bark' while excluding those that contain 'tree' or 'skin':
Gloss search string: bark & !tree & !skin Results (392)
Note that it is nearly impossible to generate a perfect result set, given the diversity of sources. At this point, the cost of adding additional factors to the search string outweighs the benefit of trimming down the search results.
