Where the words come from, how we keep the list clean, and how the random picks are made.
We started with the WordNet English database from Princeton University, which gives each word its meanings, its word type and, for many words, an example sentence. We kept only words that also appear in the public-domain ENABLE word list used by many word games, so every word is a real, standard English word.
We kept each word in its dictionary form. "Run" is in the list, but "running" and "ran" are not counted as separate words, and plurals like "dogs" are left out. That leaves 18,745 words: 11,321 nouns, 4,172 adjectives, 2,262 verbs and 990 adverbs, counted by each word's main type.
Difficulty is based on how often a word appears in everyday English, using the open wordfreq data, which combines books, news, subtitles, websites and social media.
| Easy | 2,510 words. Among the most common words in English, such as house or happy. |
|---|---|
| Medium | 5,856 words. Familiar but less frequent, such as lantern or generous. |
| Hard | 10,379 words. Most adults know them but rarely use them, such as verve or elated. |
Syllable counts come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. For the few words it does not cover, we estimate syllables from the vowel groups.
Many words have several meanings. We show the meaning that is used most often, based on how often each sense was tagged in WordNet's reference texts, with up to two other meanings underneath. For theme lists like animals or food, we checked every word by hand so that rare senses do not sneak in.
We removed swear words, slurs, sexual terms and words for drugs from the whole list, not just from the default setting. That makes every generator here safe to put on a classroom projector.
Picks are made in your browser with the Web Crypto API (crypto.getRandomValues), the same secure random number source used for passwords. Every word that matches your filters has exactly the same chance, and a single batch never repeats a word. Nothing you do is sent to our servers; kept words are stored only on your device.