About Etymoasis

A small set of free explorers for people who like to know where words come from: students building vocabulary, teachers, writers and the plainly curious.

What it does

The root breaker splits a word into its possible prefix, Latin or Greek roots and suffix. The roots list and prefixes and suffixes pages let you search the same data and print flashcards. Eponyms, doublets and word origin myths collect word stories, each with its source.

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Honest about uncertainty

Word origins are often uncertain. The root breaker calls its answers “possible parts”, marks a split as checked only when our Wiktionary-checked examples confirm every Latin or Greek part, labels anything else a pattern match, and holds back unchecked matches on short words, because many English words were borrowed whole, often through French, and some only look as if they were built from parts. The story pages repeat only what their sources support and say “origin unknown” or “disputed” where the dictionaries do. If you find a mistake, the linked source is the place to check.

Data, sources and licences

Etymoasis word data: 467 prefixes, roots and suffixes, 72 eponyms, 48 doublet sets and 17 word myths, written for Etymoasis and each checked against, and in part derived from, its entry on Wiktionary (text by Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0). Every entry links the page it was checked against. The data is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence (CC BY-SA 4.0): download it as /data/etymoasis-data.json, with its notice in /data/LICENSE.txt. Please credit “Etymoasis, data from Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0”.
Why Wiktionary: it is a dictionary whose etymologies give their sources and dates and whose text may be reused, so every claim here can be checked and shared. Etymoasis does not use Wikipedia as a source.
SCOWL word lists (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists), Copyright 2000-2016 by Kevin Atkinson, via the wordlist-english package: used only so the root breaker can recognise a whole English word inside a longer one, as believe in unbelievable. The list is /data/english-words.txt and its notice is /data/LICENSE-SCOWL.txt.
Type and icons: STIX Two Text and Murecho (SIL Open Font License), installed from Fontsource; icons from Lucide (ISC licence).