About

Curious Word of the Day gives you one unusual English word a day, with its meaning, where it comes from and a real example of it in use. There are 3,907 words in the calendar, and none repeats until they are all used.

Entries are adapted from Wiktionary, the free dictionary, and shared under its Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. Each entry links back to its source. We pick words by hand-tuned rules (a documented origin, at least one example, not in everyday use) and remove anything offensive or too technical.

Curious Word of the Day is published by Tidy Lookup, a small independent publisher of single-purpose reference sites. We aren't affiliated with any store, bank or agency named on this site. All trademarks belong to their owners.

Found a mistake? Email hello@tidylookup.com and we'll fix it, usually within a day.