Search-by-Feature

A sign-language dictionary search technique in which a user manually selects linguistic properties of the target sign — typically handshape, body-relative location, movement type, orientation, and number of hands — from a menu, and the system returns dictionary entries matching those features. Search-by-feature was the earliest mainstream approach for sign-language dictionaries and is reliable when the user can accurately recall the sign's linguistic structure, but it poses significant barriers for novice learners who may only vaguely remember the sign and who often do not know the formal names for handshapes or locations. Modern hybrid-search systems combine search-by-feature with search-by-video to let novices start with a video query and refine by features afterwards.