Sorry, I misunderstood the question. I thought the OP was saying he was only getting the word "an" returned.

Works for me, as it should.

Aani
abaisance
abandon
abandonable
abandoned
abandonedly
abandonee
...
zygobranchiate
zygopteran
zygosporange
zygosporangium
Zyrenian
Zyrian
Zyryan
[download]

You'll need to add the missing quote first, of course. And you'd profit from making the search case-insensitive: print if m/$search/i;

As an aside, please enclose your code in <c>...</c> tags.