Sources, method & licences
Real meanings only. Every definition, etymology and example on this site comes from an established dictionary source, and every block says which one.
What each word page gives you
- All current definitions — every sense in current use, with obsolete senses kept apart.
- The history — the full etymology, the word’s journey through languages, its derivatives and related words.
- The original language — the language the word came into English from, plus the oldest written and reconstructed forms where known.
- The original meaning — what the earliest traceable form meant, when the source records it.
- Use it — model sentences from the sources, then a game you can play on screen or print and do with pen and paper.
Our sources
Wiktionary (primary source)
Current definitions, etymologies, derivatives, related terms, pronunciations and usage examples are taken from the English Wiktionary, using the machine-readable extraction published at kaikki.org (wiktextract, by Tatu Ylonen). Wiktionary text is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Each word page links to its Wiktionary entry. Content on this site derived from Wiktionary is shared under the same licence.
Princeton WordNet 3.0 (cross-check)
We cross-check current senses against WordNet, a lexical database built at Princeton University. WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. The name of Princeton University or Princeton may not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software and/or database. See the WordNet licence.
Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 (historical)
Historical meanings come from the 1913 edition of Webster’s dictionary, which is in the public domain. We use only the entries marked as 1913 Webster in the GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English (GCIDE). These are always labelled as historical, because some senses have since changed.
Method: how we keep meanings real
- Definitions and etymologies are imported from the source files by a script. Nobody writes or rewrites them by hand, and they are never generated by AI.
- Where a source does not give a piece of information (for example, the meaning of the oldest form), the page says so instead of guessing.
- Where the source signals doubt (“perhaps”, “possibly”, “uncertain”), the page shows a clear uncertainty notice.
- Popular but unsupported “meanings” of words are not included unless an established dictionary records them.
- Each page links out to its source entry, and to Etymonline for further reading.
Currently 166 words. Data built 2026-11-11. More words are added regularly.