Board Thread:The Reference Desk/@comment-24894325-20160309221053/@comment-24894325-20160804215844

Sure. Google, Merriam-Webster, Oxford Dictionary, Wikipedia. With one caveat: it is sometimes hard to distinguish between a new word invented for the story and a word that exists but that I am not aware of. For the latter, of course, one should try all possible spellings and eventually find it in Google. But when I think that the word does not exist, it is natural to give up googling after 3-4 attempted spellings.

Here is an example: I tried several of Fircad/Fercad/Furkad and found nothing. I was sure that this is just an invented planet, but it turned out to be a well-known (though not to me) star, Pherkad, again courtesy of the script.