Dictionary
Searching the English dictionary
The search box finds English words by any of their forms or by their meaning. Flags narrow the results.
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Searching
Type an English word. Any form of a word finds it: went and gone find go, children finds child and better finds good. American and British spellings find the same word: neighbor finds neighbour. Phrasal verbs are words of their own, so give up finds give up as well as give.
Where the meanings of a word are translated into the language of your explanations, a word in that language finds the English words with that meaning. Otherwise a search also matches the start of any word in an English definition.
| Search | Finds |
|---|---|
| thought | think, whose past form it is |
| "run" | only entries with exactly that form or meaning |
| *ness | words ending in -ness, such as kindness |
| b?g | three-letter words like bag and big |
Quotes ask for an exact match. * stands for any number of letters and ? for exactly one.
Exact matches come first. After them come the words you know best, then the words most relevant to you, then the most frequent ones. Without an account, the order is by frequency alone.
Flags
A flag starts with # and filters the results. take #phrasal keeps the phrasal verbs with take, and water #uncountable the uncountable nouns among the results. Every flag in a search has to match.
| Flag | Keeps |
|---|---|
| #verb, #noun, #adjective, #adverb | words of that part of speech |
| #pronoun, #preposition, #conjunction, #determiner | the small words that hold sentences together |
| #phrasal | phrasal verbs, such as give up and look after |
| #countable, #uncountable | nouns you can count, such as apple, or not, such as water |
| #expression | phrases and sayings, such as break a leg |
| #a1, #a2, #b1, #b2, #c1, #c2 | words at that level, by how often they are used |
| #word, #name | words only, or names only: countries, months, languages |
The ? button in the search box opens the full list, and clicking a flag there adds it to the search.
Every flag
Searching your own study data
The flags and keywords below work only when you are signed in. The flag list marks these flags, and signed out the search does not offer them.
These flags filter by what you have done with a word. #new keeps what you marked new or have not marked at all, so it needs search text or another flag next to it. Several level flags together match any of them: #seen #familiar keeps both.
| Flag | Keeps |
|---|---|
| #new, #seen, #familiar, #known, #mastered | words at that level of yours |
| #due | what is due for review now |
| #learning | what is still in its first learning steps |
| #leech | leeches: cards you kept forgetting in review |
| #suspended | what you suspended from review |
| #looked-up, #looked-up:7d | what you looked up in a popup, ever or in the last 7 days |
| #reviewed, #reviewed:1d | what you reviewed, ever or in the last day |
| Search | Finds |
|---|---|
| #verb #known | the verbs you know |
| #looked-up #new | what you looked up but have not learned yet |
| #due #looked-up:7d | due reviews you met again this week |
The keywords on your flashcards count as meanings. If a card for borrow has the keyword lend me, searching lend finds borrow. Only cards in decks you made or have studied count, so your results can differ from a signed-out search.
Study, next to the word results on the search page and under them in the search box, starts a flashcard session on the words the search finds. It hands out the new and due ones at the levels you study, one card per word. The meanings come from the first entry the search found for that word. #looked-up:7d #new studies what you looked up this week and have not learned yet.
With the search box empty, your recent searches are listed: pick one to search again, remove one with its ×, or clear the list. Signed in, they are kept in your account and follow you to your other devices; signed out, they stay on this one.
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