Try this:
wordList = {'shoemoney'
'devices'
'mcburnett'
'gdri'
'ezralevant'
'Winston80'
'daniellean'
'geokem7'
'abs gdri def'};
logIndexes = contains(wordList, 'gdri'); % Logical vector.
linearIndexes = find(logIndexes) % Convert to only the indexes that are 1 for the logical index value.
for k = 1 : length(linearIndexes)
thisIndex = linearIndexes(k);
fprintf('gdri shows up in item #%d : "%s"\n', thisIndex, wordList{thisIndex})
end
