14. A computer based system for verifying the validity of a compound word, the system comprising: a lexical data structure stored on a tangible medium including a plurality of entries each comprising a segment field and a meta data field, the segment field identifying a textual segment and the meta data field associating one or more segment bits with the textual segment of the entry, wherein at least one of the entries associates a plurality of different segment bits with a same textual segment; a rule data structure stored on a tangible medium including at least one rule that indirectly identifies a plurality of textual segments represented in the lexical data store and links the plurality of textual segments utilizing a logical operation, the plurality of textual segments being indirectly identified through the segment bits associated with the textual segments; a computer processor that is a component of a computer that is utilized in implementing an engine, wherein the engine accesses and applies the rule so as to determine whether a textual input is a valid compound word; and wherein the rule data structure and the lexical data structure are capable of being modified without requiring that the engine be modified.
16. The system of claim 14 , wherein the engine matches a first portion of the textual input with a first selected entry in the lexical data structure, and wherein the at least one rule include a range of characters.