A search engine for retrieving documents from a database including a semantic document editor that allows a user to edit an existing document by creating searchable compound words that contains information contextually relevant to the contents of the document. The editor associates the created compound words with the document to produce an enhanced document having the compounds words associated therewith. A database is provided for storing enhanced documents and a semantic query editor is provided that enables a searcher to address the database of enhanced documents with a query. The query editor receives the query and converts it into one or more compound search words that contain contextually relevant information. A search module is provided that receives the searchable compound words and locates the relevant enhanced documents that have compound words associated with the document matching the searchable compound words. An output module presents any located documents to the searcher.