How to use this

The search box sits at the top of every page and it looks through all 4,633entries, not just the ones on the page you are reading. It matches the word and its definition, so searching for an idea such as care, steady or confidence works as well as searching for a spelling.

Results replace the page while you are searching, and the line above them always says how many matched, out of how many, and how many are on screen. Clearing the box puts the page back.

Part of speech, tone, length, whether a word describes a person, and how common it is are filters on one list rather than separate pages. You can combine them, and each active filter appears as a chip you can remove on its own.

The address bar keeps your search and your filters, so you can send someone the exact view you are looking at, and the back button takes you to the previous one.

Every entry carries a part of speech, one or two tone labels, and, where it is rarer than ordinary English, a less common label. Tone is how a word feels. Register, which appears wherever the site offers you a choice between words, is how a word lands.

These are two different things and it matters, so they are explained once, properly, in theglossary. The tones arecalm, capable, energetic, hopeful, joyful, kind, resilient, thoughtful.

Wherever alternatives are offered, they are listed inside each meaning in a fixed order:playful, everyday, warm, professional, formal, literary. That order is a layout convention so every page has the same shape. It is not a ranking and nothing here says one is better than another.

The control at the start of a row marks that word. Marked words gather in a tray that stays with you as you move between pages, and you can reorder them, copy the list with its definitions, print it as a numbered sheet, or share the page you found them on.

Copy tells you the truth about what happened. If your browser refuses the clipboard, the list appears in a box with the text already selected so you can press Ctrl+C or Command+C. It never says copied when nothing was copied.

When you only want the one word, the second control at the end of a row copies it on its own. If the clipboard refuses that too, the word is selected in the row instead and the page says so.

Any page prints as it reads, with every collapsed group opened, so nothing you can reach on screen is missing from paper. A letter page prints as a two column word list. If you have a shortlist, it prints as a numbered appendix on its own page with each word, its definition and its example.

Three things need JavaScript: the search box, the shortlist, and the control that copies a single word. With scripting off none of them is drawn at all, because a control that cannot work should not be on the page.

Everything else works. All 4,633 entries on 4,007 root words are still reachable: every letter page carries its full list, every collapsed group opens, every definition and example is there, every link works, and every page still prints. Instead of the search box you get a link straight to the A to Z index.