Another work dated 1850 by Muthuswāmi Piḷḷai was Nānārttatipikai which deals mainly with Sanskrit homonyms.

The other similar work of Sanskrit origin is Ᾱriya-nikaṇtu, nothing much is known about it.

Virivu-nikaṇṭu by Aruṇācala Nāvalar was written probably in 1900. This perhaps is the largest work on homonyms.

The move to place emphasis more on “reference” had as its first work in Akarāti-nikaṇṭu. This adopted the alphabetical order in the arrangement of the vocables. It can be dated as 1594 A.D. and the author is Chindambara Rẽvaṇa Siddhar. The attempt to follow the alphabetical order is followed only for the first letter of the word. The person who implanted this notion into the author’s mind is not known. We can say that this was the first attempt in Tamil to follow the alphabetical arrangement among works of reference. It is important in another way also. It was the first to use the word akarāti for dictionary. Since during the 16th century the akarāti alone would mean nothing more than an alphabetical arrangement the author had to use nikaṇṭu also. It was a turning point in Tamil lexicography.

In 1700 A. D. there was an attempt at improvement on the above plan of work. Īswara Bhārati was the author of Palporuḷcūḷāmaṇi.

The work written about 1750 A. D. by Swaminātha Kavirāyar is called Potikai-Nikaṇṭu which has the alphabetical order. It has about 2228 words and dispenses with all sectional classifications in the treatment of words. This author has however followed the alphabetical order upto the second letter and hence it is an advance and improvement on the earlier works.

The method of arranging words in the alphabetical order by now had caught the fancy of native scholars and we see attempts being made to re-arrange in this order earlier works. One such manuscript is Tivākaram dated 1702 A. D. In this, the 11th section is divided into two separate parts and they are arranged in the alphabetical order. The other example is the “glossarium