The popularity of the inverse dictionary or word list seems to have passed largely unnoticed by those who labor in the field of proper names. Pioneered by Qtto Gradenwitz of Leipzig at the tum of the century, I the inverse list was conceived as an aid in paleographic research. Armed with his inversely alphabetized Latin vocabulary, Gradenwitz was much better able to eliminate the lacunae in the Latin manuscripts he was transcribing because he could now deal more effectively with words whose

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... t letters were illegible from the ravages of time or other damage. If, for example, he came across a word whose first four letters were illegible, leaving only a three letter ending which could be read, he could quickly find all seven letter Latin words having the aforementioned ending, and, on the basis of meaning and context, choose the most appropriate. The system was not perfect, but it definitely reduced the number of words which had to be left incompletely transcribed. The needs of paleographers, whose number is limited, would not have led to the increasing popularity of the inverse format, had not other uses been found. The inverse format involves a simple concept: words are placed in alphabetical order moving from the last letter toward the first instead of in the usual arrangement. The words are then printed as they normally would be, but the right margin is justified rather than the left. The technique is perceived most clearly in a sample. If we take the first sentence in this paragraph and arrange the words inversely, the result will be as follows: