EtymologyExplorer

Name: EtymologyExplorer
Rating: 4.8 (1420 reviews)
Author: Might Could Studios LLC

Explore words and their roots!

Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad

1.4K Ratings
Ages

4+
Years
Category

Education
Developer

Might Could Studios LLC
Language

EN
English
Size

34.8
MB

Etymology Explorer is the word origin app you've been waiting your whole life for! Features include: • Visual map of word origins • Connections between related words (e.g. acrobat and acronym) • Etymology in full written form • Definition, transliterations, and audio pronunciations I would love to hear your feedback on how to improve the app, so please let me know if there are any issues or what features you want next! Ever wonder if the words album and albino are related? They are! Download the app and you'll find out how. For more information on our Terms of Use and Terms and Conditions please visit https://etymologyexplorer.com/terms_and_conditions.html

Ratings & Reviews

4.8

out of 5

1.4K Ratings

Unique with a polished UI
08/07/2023

Aquaddict
Unique way of visually exploring word etymologies. Data comes from Wiktionary and includes a large number of languages besides English. Can get lost in this app for stretches of time. I wish the lifetime membership was on par with other vocab type apps ($20-$30). Overall great job by this sole developer, the attention to detail and thinking that has gone into usability have produced a beautiful app. UPDATE: Saw an offer for lifetime membership pop up in the app a few days after posting the above review, and didn’t hesitate to purchase. Using it daily. Rarely used words who meanings I kept forgetting have now become easily memorized, just by seeing once how the meaning arises from the roots of the word. Brilliant.

Developer Response
I truly appreciate that you took the time to leave my app an awesome review, Aquaddict! I hear your request and will consider that in the future. I'm so glad you appreciate my work in creating this app! Please recommend my app to your word friends if you get a chance, and don’t hesitate to shoot me a note at dev@etymologyexplorer.com if you have any questions.
Unique with a polished UI
08/07/2023

Aquaddict

Unique way of visually exploring word etymologies. Data comes from Wiktionary and includes a large number of languages besides English. Can get lost in this app for stretches of time. I wish the lifetime membership was on par with other vocab type apps ($20-$30). Overall great job by this sole developer, the attention to detail and thinking that has gone into usability have produced a beautiful app. UPDATE: Saw an offer for lifetime membership pop up in the app a few days after posting the above review, and didn’t hesitate to purchase. Using it daily. Rarely used words who meanings I kept forgetting have now become easily memorized, just by seeing once how the meaning arises from the roots of the word. Brilliant.
Developer Response 08/05/2022
I truly appreciate that you took the time to leave my app an awesome review, Aquaddict! I hear your request and will consider that in the future. I'm so glad you appreciate my work in creating this app! Please recommend my app to your word friends if you get a chance, and don’t hesitate to shoot me a note at dev@etymologyexplorer.com if you have any questions.
Mostly great
07/19/2021

glowingrabbits
I’m a huge etymology nerd and have spent many many many hours of my life on Wiktionary exploring etymology trees of words across many languages. This app is super exciting to me and offers some features that were either painful or impossible for me to do before, so it’s almost immediately improved my life and I bought the lifetime unlock pretty much right away. It’s a great example of applying fairly simple technology to a problem that ends up providing a ton of benefit.The iPad app isn’t great, it feels like a stretched out iPhone app, and it has some notable layout issues (especially the family view while in portrait, where part of the display is cut off). The tree view also feels really large and displays very little information on the screen at once. I wish it made better use of the larger iPad screen, especially with long and complex etymologies where scrolling around a lot gets annoying. Horizontal scrolling in the tree is also pretty painful. Even just the ability to zoom out and see more of the tree at once would be awesome. The other feature that I’d really like is the ability to search for words across all or multiple languages. Right now it seems like it’s only possible to search within one at a time and it really limits my ability to find the words I'm looking for.So, there’s definitely some basic stuff that could be improved, but even in its current form this app is a great supplement in etymological research!

Developer Response
Hello glowingrabbits, thank you so much for your feedback. It's so great to hear some constructive suggestions from my users and I'm definitely going to take your comments into account regarding the iPad app. Thank you for your subscription and your support. I'm so glad to read reviews from fellow word lovers like you! If you get a chance, please recommend the app to your word friends, and don’t hesitate to shoot me a note at dev@etymologyexplorer.com if you have any questions. Thanks again!
Mostly great
07/19/2021

glowingrabbits

I’m a huge etymology nerd and have spent many many many hours of my life on Wiktionary exploring etymology trees of words across many languages. This app is super exciting to me and offers some features that were either painful or impossible for me to do before, so it’s almost immediately improved my life and I bought the lifetime unlock pretty much right away. It’s a great example of applying fairly simple technology to a problem that ends up providing a ton of benefit.The iPad app isn’t great, it feels like a stretched out iPhone app, and it has some notable layout issues (especially the family view while in portrait, where part of the display is cut off). The tree view also feels really large and displays very little information on the screen at once. I wish it made better use of the larger iPad screen, especially with long and complex etymologies where scrolling around a lot gets annoying. Horizontal scrolling in the tree is also pretty painful. Even just the ability to zoom out and see more of the tree at once would be awesome. The other feature that I’d really like is the ability to search for words across all or multiple languages. Right now it seems like it’s only possible to search within one at a time and it really limits my ability to find the words I'm looking for.So, there’s definitely some basic stuff that could be improved, but even in its current form this app is a great supplement in etymological research!
Developer Response 07/23/2021
Hello glowingrabbits, thank you so much for your feedback. It's so great to hear some constructive suggestions from my users and I'm definitely going to take your comments into account regarding the iPad app. Thank you for your subscription and your support. I'm so glad to read reviews from fellow word lovers like you! If you get a chance, please recommend the app to your word friends, and don’t hesitate to shoot me a note at dev@etymologyexplorer.com if you have any questions. Thanks again!
feedback page alone deserves 5 stars!
06/24/2025

FloooofyFloof
This app has a Feedback page that is better than possibly any I’ve ever seen. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s like a glorious moment on a screen that was created to be user friendly, and actually helpful to the user, it’s like I’m back decades ago in the early days of apps before ads and subscriptions and repeating chatbots or no actual way to provide feedback at all despite a million useless options to search through—it’s got none of that (ok I did pay for a subscription), it’s just nice and clean and simple with good usability! This is literally the first review I’ve ever written for an app, here’s hoping things keep going well when they answer my question
feedback page alone deserves 5 stars!
06/24/2025

FloooofyFloof

This app has a Feedback page that is better than possibly any I’ve ever seen. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s like a glorious moment on a screen that was created to be user friendly, and actually helpful to the user, it’s like I’m back decades ago in the early days of apps before ads and subscriptions and repeating chatbots or no actual way to provide feedback at all despite a million useless options to search through—it’s got none of that (ok I did pay for a subscription), it’s just nice and clean and simple with good usability! This is literally the first review I’ve ever written for an app, here’s hoping things keep going well when they answer my question
Really fun for etymology nerds like me
09/25/2024

wprestong3
I have used the Online Etymology Dictionary for years, but this app expands on its features to do etymology searches and cognate searches every which way. It also lets you do searches in languages such as French and German (as well as Latin), which the Online Etymology Dictionary doesn’t help with as much. It does cross-language cognate searches, too, which you can’t really do in Wiktionary. I particularly like the Random tool: lately I’ve taken to looking up random words as my favorite little iPhone game, instead of other games I had been fiddling with. Thank you so much for making this available! Keep up the good work!
Really fun for etymology nerds like me
09/25/2024

wprestong3

I have used the Online Etymology Dictionary for years, but this app expands on its features to do etymology searches and cognate searches every which way. It also lets you do searches in languages such as French and German (as well as Latin), which the Online Etymology Dictionary doesn’t help with as much. It does cross-language cognate searches, too, which you can’t really do in Wiktionary. I particularly like the Random tool: lately I’ve taken to looking up random words as my favorite little iPhone game, instead of other games I had been fiddling with. Thank you so much for making this available! Keep up the good work!