Wordnik
What is Wordnik?
Wordnik is the world’s biggest online English dictionary, by number of words.
Wordnik is a nonprofit organization, and our mission is to find and share as many words of English as possible with as many people as possible.
Definitions
Wordnik shows definitions from multiple sources, so you can see as many different takes on a word’s meaning as possible.
What do we mean by “related words”? Our word relationships include synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, words used in the same context, a reverse dictionary, and tags. But what does all of that mean?
Here are the related words for tree:
First up are synonyms, or words with the same or similar meaning, for instance, timber and sapling.
You’ll also find hypernyms, otherwise known as superordinates, or words that are more generic or abstract than the given word. The prefix hyper- means “over, beyond, overmuch, above measure,” so you can think of a hypernym as a sort of umbrella over more specific words. A hypernym for tree might be flora.
Hyponyms, or subordinates, are words that are more specific than the given word (the prefix hypo- means “under, beneath”). Simal, coralwood, kingwood, and willow are specific types of trees (hey, that would make a great list!).
Same context refers to words that might be used in a similar context, such as wood, grass, garden, and branch. (One could argue that branch is also a meronym, or “a term that names part of a larger whole,” for tree.) We use the great resource WordNetfor much of our hyponym and hypernym data.
The Reverse Dictionary section lists words that contain the given word in their definition.
Tags are created by logged-in Wordniks. Tags are anything you might use to label the given word (for instance, tree is tagged plant), and the Tagging section shows what words have been given the tag tree, including acacia, ash, and alder.
Lists
There are more than 30,000 lists on Wordnik! Any logged-in Wordnik can make one (or more, or many, many more) lists. Many words on Wordnik are included in multiple lists — check out the word kerfuffle:
When you’re logged in you’ll see your own lists on the right:
To add a word to your list click the box:
To view the full list, hover over the list name and click on the word “view”:
Want more about Wordnik lists? Check out this blog post about lists. You can also follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep up with our Lists of the Day
