Reverse Dictionary
Describe the word you are trying to remember — "fear of small enclosed spaces", "the main argument of an essay" — and get the words that fit, best match first, each with a definition so you can spot yours. Add a topic to steer the ranking, or the first letter if you remember it. Free, no sign-up.
Describe a word you cannot quite remember and see the words that fit, best match first.
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Word data from the Datamuse API
How to Use the Reverse Dictionary
- Describe the word. Write what it means, as you might explain it to a friend: a person who studies the stars, to make something less severe.
- Add hints if you have them. A topic such as geology or law steers the ranking toward a field; the first letter or two narrows the list to words that start that way.
- Choose Find words. Results arrive best match first, each with its part of speech and a short definition.
- Check the definitions. Filter by part of speech, click a result to look for words close to it, or copy the one you were after.
When a Reverse Dictionary Helps
An ordinary dictionary goes from a word to its meaning; a reverse dictionary goes the other way. It is the tool for the tip-of-the-tongue moment — you know exactly what you mean and cannot find the word. Psychologists Roger Brown and David McNeill described that state in a 1966 study and found that people stuck in it can often recall a word's first letter and its number of syllables before the word itself, which is why the finder takes a first letter and why the Word Pattern Finder takes a length.
- Terms in a new field. The study of ancient handwriting returns paleography; fear of small enclosed spaces returns claustrophobia.
- The precise word for a draft. Someone who reviews a paper before publication returns reviewer and referee.
- Writing in a second language. When you know a concept in your first language, describe it in plain English and let the list supply the term.
- Crosswords and word games. Combine a definition clue with the first letter you already have.
Writing a Description That Works
The search matches the meaning of your words, so describe the meaning and leave out the circumstances. A word for when someone makes a problem less serious works less well than to make something less severe. Short, plain descriptions of three to eight words do best; name the category if you know it — a person who…, the feeling of…, a tool for… — and if the right word does not appear, swap the key word in your description for a synonym and try again.
Hints at work
to make something less severe
relax, relaxed, relaxing, assuage, modify, softened, loosen, moderate…
…starting with m
moderate, modify, mitigate, mince, modified, modifying, minced, mollify…
a very long period of time, topic geology
epoch moves from tenth place to first
Read the results as candidates, not answers. They are ranked by how closely each word's meaning matches your description, and the lower ranks fill with loosely related words — relaxed and relaxing above are there only as forms of relax. The definition beside each word is how you tell the right one from a near miss.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a reverse dictionary?
- A dictionary that you search by meaning instead of by spelling. You describe a concept and it returns the words whose definitions match, which makes it useful when a word is on the tip of your tongue or when you know the idea but not the term for it.
- Why are some results unrelated to my description?
- The ranking combines dictionary definitions with statistics about how words are used, so the lower results include words that are only loosely associated with yours. The best matches are usually in the first ten. If they miss, rephrase with plainer words or add a topic.
- How does the topic field work?
- Topic words re-rank the results toward a subject; they never remove a result. With a very long period of time, adding geology lifts epoch from tenth place to first. Up to five words are used, and nouns work best.
- What if I remember the first letter?
- Type it into Starts with. Only words beginning with those letters are kept, and words further down the ranking move up — to make something less severe with m brings mitigate and mollify into the top ten. If you also know the length, the Word Pattern Finder can search by letter pattern.
- Does it work in other languages?
- No — descriptions and results are English. Datamuse, the word service behind the tool, searches an English vocabulary of about 550,000 words and phrases.
- Is my description sent anywhere?
- Your description and hints go to CitationEasy's server, which asks the Datamuse API at api.datamuse.com for matching words, so Datamuse sees the description but not your IP address. CitationEasy keeps no record of who searched for what; answers are cached for up to a week, so the same description asked again does not go back to Datamuse. Datamuse says it keeps a temporary log of queries and discards it at the end of the day.