Exclude a word from a spotlight search?

How can I tell spotlight to exclude items containing a particular word from the search?
In other words, I am looking for something similar to google's "-word" option:
example (google) of a search command for google:
+mac -software
(show all items containing "mac", but don't show those containing "software").
Is there any similar feature in Spotlight?
Thanks for any suggestion!
PowerMac, iBook   Mac OS X (10.4.3)  

The most reliable way is to use a Raw Query in the Command-F search window, access the "Other" criterion and select Raw Query. The Not option is != so if you wanted to find everything that contains the work Photoshop in its name, but not the word Elements, your Raw Query would look like this:
((kMDItemFSName == "Photoshop") && (kMDItemFSName != "Element"))
The astericks * are wild cards. Thus it will find Adobe Photoshop CS, Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Paths, and so on.
If you save it as a SmartFolder you can bring it up and then just change the words you want to search on.
Francine
Schwieder

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