wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them.
traditional dictionaries make you wait until theyve found what they consider to be "enough" information about a word before they will show it to you. wordnik knows you dont want to wait—if youre interested in a word, were interested too!
our goal is to show you as much information as possible, just as fast as we can find it, for every word in english, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.
by "information," we dont just mean traditional definitions (although we have plenty of those)! this information could be:
an example sentence—even if weve only found one sentence for a word, well show it to you. (and well show you where the sentence came from, too!related words: not just synonyms and antonyms, but words that are used in the same contexts. (for instance, cheeseburger, milkshake, and doughnut are not synonyms, but they show up in the same kinds of sentences.)images tagged by our friends at flickr: want to know what a "pout" looks like? well show you.statistics: how rare is "tintinnabulation"? well, we think youll see it only about once a year. "smile"? you might see that word many times, every day.an audio pronunciation—and you can record your own!something you tell us! use the "contribute" links to tell us something—anything—about a word.
what is wordnik not?
wordnik is not a traditional dictionary (in fact, weve seriously considered not calling wordnik a dictionary at all). if you have a suggestion for a better word than "dictionary" to describe wordnik, please send it our way!
