Find word meaning in all languages

How do I use OneLook’s thesaurus / reverse dictionary?

OneLook lets you find any kind of word for any kind of writing.
Like a traditional thesaurus, you
can use it to find synonyms and antonyms, but it’s far more flexible.
Describe what you’re looking for with a single word, a few words,
or even a whole sentence. Type in your description and hit
Enter (or select a word that shows up in the autocomplete preview)
to see the related words.
You can order, filter, and explore the
words that come back in a variety of creative ways.

Here’s a video which
goes over some of the basics.

What are some examples?

Exploring the results

Click on any result to see definitions and usage examples tailored to your search,
as well as links to follow-up searches and additional usage information when available.
OneLook knows about more than 2 million different
words and expressions covering every topic under the sun.
Try exploring a favorite topic for a while and you’ll be surprised
how much new stuff there is to learn!

Ordering the results

Your results will initially appear with the most closely related word shown first,
the second-most closely shown second, and so on.
You can re-order the results in a variety of different ways, including
alphabetically, by length, by popularity, by modernness, by formality, and by other
aspects of style. Click the
box that says «Closest meaning first…» to see them all.
(Here’s a short video about sorting and filtering
with OneLook Thesaurus.)

Filtering the results

You can refine your search by clicking on the «Advanced filters» button
on the results page. This lets you narrow down your results to match
a certain starting letter, number of letters, number of syllables, related
concept, meter, vowel sound, or number of syllables.
Read more details on filters if you’re interested in how they work.

I’m only looking for synonyms! What’s with all of these weird results?

For some kinds of searches only the
first result or the first few results are truly synonyms
or good substitutions for your search word.
We highlight these results in yellow.
Beyond that, the results are meant to inspire you to consider similar words and adjacent
concepts. Not all of the results will make sense at first, but they’re all
connected with your search in some way. We’d rather give you too many options than
too few. If you’re unsure of a word, we urge you to click on
it to check its definitions and usage examples before using it in your Oscars
acceptance speech or honors thesis.

Other ways to access this service:

• Drag this link to your browser’s bookmarks bar for a convenient button that goes to the thesaurus:

      

  OneLook

• Enter onelook.com/word into your browser’s address bar to go directly to the OneLook Thesaurus entry for word.
• We offer a OneLook Thesaurus iPhone/iPad app
  for a low subscription fee, with a two-week free trial.
  This gives you OneLook at your fingertips, and
  several cool app-only features, while helping us maintain the service for all!
• If you use Google Docs, the thesaurus is integrated into the free OneLook Thesaurus Google Docs Add-On as the «Synonyms» button. (Wildcard patterns are not yet suppoerted by this add-on.)
• If you regularly use the main OneLook site, you can put colon (:) into any OneLook search box,
  followed by a description, to go directly to the thesaurus.
• If you’re a developer, the Datamuse API gives you access to the core features of this site.

Is this available in any language other than English?

The same interface is now available in Spanish at OneLook Tesauro
as a beta version. More languages are coming!

How does it work?

We use a souped-up version of our own Datamuse API,
which in turn uses several lingustic resources described in the «Data sources» section
on that page. The definitions come from Wiktionary,
Wikipedia, and WordNet.
Here are some known problems
with the current system.

Much gratitude to Gultchin et al for the algorithm behind the «Most funny-sounding» sort order.

Profanity and problematic word associations

If you’re using this site with children, be forewarned you’ll
find profanity and other vulgar expressions if you use OneLook frequently.
(We take an unflinching look at how words have actually been used; scrubbing out
hurtful wordswould be a disservice to everyone.)

Some of the thesaurus results come from a statistical analysis of the
words in a large collection of books written in the past two
centuries. A handful of times we’ve found that this analysis can lead
us to suggest word associations that reflect racist or harmful
stereotypes present in this source material. If you see one of these,
please know that we do not endorse what the word association implies.
In egregious cases we will remove it from the site if you
report it to us via the feedback link below.

Privacy

No personally identifying information is ever collected on this site
or by any add-ons or apps associated with OneLook. OneLook Thesaurus sends
your search query securely to the Datamuse API, which keeps a log file of
the queries made to the service in the last 24 hours. The log file is deleted
after 24 hours and we do not retain any long-term information about your
IP address or invididual queries.

Who’s behind this site and where can I send my comments and complaints feedback?

OneLook is a service of Datamuse.
You can send us feedback here.

The sunburst logo (🔆) is the emoji symbol for «high
brightness», which we aspire to create with OneLook. (The
graphic came from the open-source Twemoji
project.)

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Where can I search for words using descriptive sentences? For example, now I’m looking for a word meaning «to purify (by hand) a quantity of grain and take away anything that isn’t good grain.»

How could I get words like that? I know it in my first-language, but I don’t have a classic version of it to use in automatic translators.

Maybe a search engine that uses content words from my description and offers words that could mean the same with their dictionary definitions. Nothing I’d tried in (translate.)google.com gave me the desired result.

Update:

An example dictionary that I use is (Oxford’s Word-Power Dictionary). It’s not for the purpose of the question but for clarification.

Oxford’s has a 3,000 word list of ‘bare-bone-essentials.’ It contains the most-used words in English and all of the grammatical operators. Ideally, these are the words necessary for a learner to use an English-English dictionary such as Oxford’s. The descriptions of words in Oxford’s rely on this list for definitions.

An electronic (web-based) dictionary for word-meaning-search should have a larger list (maybe 10,000) and use a thesaurus to down-level difficult words a user may use in the search then, using all content words in the search phrase, present a list of words whose definitions seem appropriate. Another regular dictionary may be used from there.

• Example:

  Search query: «to use hands to purify a quantity of grain taking away anything that isn’t good grain.»

  Content Words: «use-hands; purify; quantity-of-grain; taking-away; anything; isn’t; good-grain»

  Filtered: «use-hands; clean; quantity-of-seeds; take-away;anything; not-good-grain»

  Words: «1; 2; 3; 4» that use the content words to varying degrees.

And that’s a five minutes’ work!

PS. Sorry about the delay; connection problems…

I will be using all user searches which is above 500 thousand now — to use as a guide on how to improve You Go Words. Every word search, regardless if is an error or success — provides me an idea of what should be included if it’s not already available, and I will be working to ensure every word find will be implemented for use. Please be patient with me as I am a single fello working on You Go Words. Thank you for being a user. You can currently find all words lists and answers for any word such as the definition, synonym, antonym, anagram or spelling, derivative, hyponym and hypernym, pertainym and much more. Using the quantum word finder search bar above, you can filter words by the type of speech. The type of speech filters available include articles, singular or plural nouns, pronouns, adjectives, singular or plural verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.

Word lists by grade level from kindergarden to SAT words, the origin or roots of the word, syllables, length, consonants, vowels, letters and by unique sets of letters. Because English can have more than one type of speech (noun, verb, etc.), I provide you the types of speech I was able to find for each English word. Please use the «add/edit» word feature if you find errors.

How To Use The Word Finder

When you use the quantum virtual word search at the top of this page, you can filter your words in thousands of ways. Use the following cheat sheet to get an idea of the how you can use the finder to craft your search and to get the exact lists of words you desire!

The following searches can be done seperately as individual searches, or, as a combination together to make a super filter word find. You can type using the quantum search box at the top of this page, wich is found throughout every page of this website. Type whatever it is you are searching for, exactly as you want to type it. If you want to find words starting with a-z and have two consonants or 4 vowels — you can say just that ( Words starting with a, have two consonants and four vowels ). Give that search a try. Here are the word find filters you can include in your word search.

Main Style Of User Queries

• Length queries are in the format of : 5 letter words, words with 3 letters, 3 letter
• Solving puzzles is as simple as entering JUST the characters you need such as: blariueiuskjd and using underscore for missing letters such as : wo__s
• Although not recommended, you can search with spaces : w o r d s
• To find words by the first, second, third or up to the eight letter of a word. You can type «words with the 8th letter s, or words with the eighth letter s
• Finding words «without» consonants or vowels, requires you to say that. «Words without consonants». You can also find «words with all vowels», «words with no vowels» and «words with the vowels aie»
• Search by saying «double» consonants/vowels and you’ll find words with double vowels, or double consonants. By saying triple, quadrupal, etc. — you’re then saying «words with three vowels in a row, or four consonants in a row» but it won’t provide a list of words that do not exist such as words with three of the same vowels/consonants in a row — which is why saying «triple,quadrupal,etc.» is not the same as saying «double». Double means two o’s or two r’s, etc.

Word Filter Finding

• Grade Level: kindergarten, or grade 1-12 or SAT words.
• Speech type: Article, Nouns, pronoun, verb, adjective, satellite adjectives, preposition, conjunction, interjections, etc.
• Singular/Plural: find words that are singular or plural by adding that to your search. » singular words «, «plural words»
• Compound Words: simply add the phrase compound words, or that are compound or similar addition to your search
• Origin: if you’re searching for words of a specific root language, or origin. What is the origin? Example: scottish origins
• Language: For names only, you can include language in your search and include origin as well. Example: girl names with scottish roots that are korean language
• Starts With letter: starts with d, starting with a, etc.
• Ends with letter: ends with d, ending with d, etc.
• Spelled like, or containing: A unique tool. Find all words spelling like or containing a set of characters. Example: «spelled with out», or «containing out» will give you words that have the spelling of «out», such as about, youth, without, shout
• Length: how long of a word? five letter words, words with 6 letters.
• Consonants: single or double consonants, such as mississippi with two s’s and two p’s. Search for words with 1-9 consonants. Simple search for double consonant words. To find words with any two consonants in a row, simply search for «# consonants in a row«.
• Vowels: The same search as consonants, such as double vowel words and two vowels in a row like gail, blue, going, etc.
• Syllables: Words with two syllables, three syllables, single syllable words, etc.
• Letters: A unique tool to the web, exclusive to You Go Words (for now). Search «words with the letters ace or even find words that do not have the letters ace. You can not at this time combine both contain and not containing filters.
• Only the letters: You can find words with only the letters/characters you want, such as words with only the letters elvn. Which would give you, «eleven».
• Anagrams: Find anagrams which are words that can be made from another word. This includes repeating characters where as only the letters search does not.
• Unscramble? If you’re just unscrambling a set of letters, enter just that set of letters such as soanntncoo . But if you need to add length, make sure you use «unscramble» in your search. Like: unscramble soanntncoo , 6 letter words

Combining Your Word Search

In the following search style, you can use any of the options mentioned above to filter your word lists. You can combine them (one of each) to have a drilled down word list of words. You can not combine the same filter such as two a’s and two c’s. But, here are some examples of advanced word finds you could search to list results.

Example Search

• Words that are nouns (noun, pronoun, verbs, adjectives, etc.)

  Learn more about parts of speech: UTexas.edu Speech.htm

• Words that end with a vowel or words that start with a vowel
• Words that end with a consonant or words that start with a cosnonant
• Words for grade 1 students (kindergarten, grade 1-12, SAT words)
• Words with Old English roots (root(s) or origin(s))
• 10 letter words
• words starting with a
• end in b | ending with the letters ing
• 7 consonants
• single vowel words
• single syllable words
• words with 3 syllables
• Words with the letters ace
• Words with only the letters ace
• words with 4 vowels
• words that do not have the letters ae
• list of words that do not have four vowels
• etc.

Advanced Word List Combinations

Slightly more difficult searches, but you can perform them. The way you type, is up to you. You can even type in words, such as one, two, three and four.

• nouns for grade 1 students that start with a and have two vowels
• Words with seven letters starting with a
• 5 letter words with double vowels starting with a and 2 consonants
  Example:
  • Agree
• 5 letter words with 3 consonants
• triple consonant words
• words with 4 consonants and 4 vowels
• Words with 5 consonants and the letters rst
• 9 letter words with 4 consonants and 2 syllables that do not have the letter a
• 7 letter words with double consonants and 2 vowels, with 1 syllable
• Find a word that ends with out and starts with a

Counting English Words With Filters

Sometimes we want to find out «how many» words contain certain filters, without the rest of the data. You can simply search «how many words» or «how many» to do this filtering. You could say, «count 9 letter words» and get the same answer as «how many words have 9 letters».

• How many words have 9 letters, 7 consonants and 3 syllables?