title: More efficient way of getting things from a dictionary
body: <p>So, I am writing a program that you can enter keywords into to get something back, but the method of using 'if-elif-else' statements doesn't seem like a very efficient way to do this. Is there a better way I could do this? Here is some code for reference:</p>
  
  <pre><code>things = {
      "word": "desc."
      #So on and so forth
  }
  
  def check():
      find = raw_input("&gt; ")
      if find == "word":
          print things["word"]
          get_check()
      #So on and so forth with the elif's and else's
      elif find == "exit":
          print ""
  
  def get_check():
      check()
  
  check()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If there isn't a more efficient way to do this, please tell me. (I would think there would be though.) Also, sorry about the title, I don't know many technical terms that I should use. So feel free to edit title.</p>