When a round is over you can tap a word to see what it means. Looking a word up sends nothing about you anywhere: the meanings are plain files that come with the game.
Meanings and example sentences for most words are adapted from Open English WordNet (2025 edition) by the Open English WordNet team, which is built on Princeton WordNet. It is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). We changed it: definitions were shortened and filtered, one meaning was chosen for each word, and some words are shown as a form of another word.
Wiktionary. Where Open English WordNet has no entry, the meaning is adapted from English Wiktionary, by its contributors, through the kaikki.org extract. It is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). We changed it: definitions were shortened and filtered, one meaning was chosen for each word, and some words are shown as a form of another word. Our adapted versions of those definitions are offered under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0: you may copy and reuse them, with credit to Wiktionary's contributors. They are the entries marked "w" in the definition files this game loads, at /defs/ followed by the first two letters of the word and .json (for example /defs/ta.json). The card for such a word says "Wiktionary".
Oddword's own. A few hundred words are in neither dictionary, or only with meanings unsuitable for a family game. Their short definitions were written for Oddword, and their cards say "Oddword". If you spot a mistake in one, please tell us at the address on the privacy page.
Pronunciations (American English) are adapted from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, rewritten as plain respellings.
How rare a word starts out (before real players have played it) comes from a simulated crowd that uses word frequencies from wordfreq by Robyn Speer, and the share of people who know a word from Brysbaert, M., Mandera, P., McCormick, S. F. & Keuleers, E. (2019), Word prevalence norms for 62,000 English lemmas, Behavior Research Methods 51, 467–479. Neither is shown or passed on as it is; they are two inputs to Oddword’s own estimate, which real plays then correct.
The makers of these dictionaries and data sets do not endorse Oddword and are not responsible for how their work appears here. Their licences ask us to repeat these notices:
Open English Wordnet 2023 Copyright 2023 by the Open English Wordnet team. This software and database is being provided to you, the LICENSEE, by the Open English Wordnet team under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and database and its documentation for any purpose and without fee or royalty is hereby granted, provided that you agree to comply with the following copyright notice and statements, including the disclaimer, and that the same appear on ALL copies of the software, database and documentation, including modifications that you make for internal use or for distribution.
WordNet 3.1 Copyright 2011 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE LICENSED SOFTWARE, DATABASE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS. The name of Princeton University or Princeton may not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software and/or database. Title to copyright in this software, database and any associated documentation shall at all times remain with Princeton University and LICENSEE agrees to preserve same.
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary: Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. The contents of this file are deemed to be source code. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge the contributions of many volunteers to the expansion and improvement of this dictionary. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY NOR ITS EMPLOYEES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.