Press
“Erin McKean on creating the biggest online dictionary you’ve never heard of”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, March 22: pálinka, ludologist, skaldic, buttons.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, March 15: Kelpers, loquat, NEAT, and landspouts.”
“The system eschews keywords, headlines, popularity, or other standard cues and instead uses the same machine-learning technology behind Wordnik to construct a more sophisticated understanding of what a post means. That helps the system find other posts that are truly similar, which, in theory, readers will find more interesting.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, February 1: mot-diese, Captcha, kanban, windowing.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, January 25: funambulist, metatarso-phalangeal, tongqi, omas.”
“When you finish reading this story, what should you read next? This question is becoming a growing preoccupation for web publishers who are turning to a variety of story suggestion tools in hopes of keeping you on the page. The latest offering comes from a company called Reverb, which believes its background as a dictionary publisher makes it well poised to find readers relevant content.”
“The founders of online dictionary service Wordnik have shifted gears and today launched a new company called Reverb, which is helping people connect better with “meaningful, relevant content.””
“Wordnik launched its first big non-dictionary product last month, a tool allowing online publishers to recommend related content to their readers. Now it’s signaling even broader ambitions by launching a new company, which it’s calling Reverb.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, January 18: Delphos, gers, peak-car, quantified self.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, January 11: reminder packaging, laolaiqiao, fake books, hysteresis. ”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, January 5: MOOC, droppage, jukochodai, slow steaming.”
“An excellent dictionary application, Wordnik is focused on making absolutely certain that students understand the meaning of the looked-up word. Readers don’t just receive a definition for a word, but multiple definitions and supplementary materials (more on that below) that aid the reader in fully grasping how and when to use the word. Taken together, Wordnik can allow your students (and you, let’s be honest) to be able to gain a deeper, contextualized understanding of a word.”
“The bot shops using a random word plucked from the Wordnik API. ”
“At the Wordnik blog, Angela Tung has handed out her Best of Word Soup 2012 huzzahs for "interesting, hilarious, ridiculous, and sometimes NSFW words from TV this year.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, December 22: supers, guayamisas, never events, and remarques.”
“Joined by Tony Tam, lead developer of Swagger, and Wordnik CEO.”
“I’ll see [The Hobbit] eventually and will undoubtedly enjoy it, but what also excites a bibliophile and logophile like me is the attention it garners for the book and the language of the tale. . . .“Celebrating The Hobbit: Journey Words, Unexpected or Not” on Wordnik”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, December 15: benne, sufganiyot, barrel bomb, twoosh.”
“A good definition is like a good poem: beautiful and worthwhile in itself' - Interview with lexistar Erin McKean”
“Related Content, by Wordnik — branching out by offering a widget for websites which recommends other content on your site which is related to the current page.”
“Wordnik is becoming more than an online dictionary today with the open beta launch of Related Content by Wordnik, which web publishers can install on their sites — when someone reaches the end of a page, Wordnik will recommend other pages that they might want to check out.”
“How do you come up with the perfect brand name? Wordnik [good name] has the scoop.”
“The Twitter Fiction Festival gets underway today. . . .Erin McKean, self-described "dictionary evangelist" and founder of Wordnik.com, will also join the discussion.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, November 24: spezzato, ace, Porkopolis, exit hosts.”
“Every time I run it, I give it a set budget, say $50. It grabs a random word from the Wordnik API, then runs an Amazon search based on that word.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, November 17: Y-word, kamnan, ophidiophobia, gull.”
“Experienced teacher and tech visionary Dan Roberts shares practical ICT ideas to use in the classroom. This week he’s delving into the online dictionary/thesaurus, Wordnik.”
“Various blogs are celebrating Diwali, and Wordnik is doing so with a list of 10 words English gets from Indian languages. ”
“In the event that you want to talk like Jane Austen.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, November 11: dancheong, epigraph, angioedema, sourdough. ”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, November 3: Frankenstorm, vore, adiponectin, haikai.”
“Headlines from November 1, 2012: How to talk like Jane Austen.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, October 27: Bibendum, glycan, ovonics, boro.”
“Happy Dictionary Day, writers and wordsmiths! Yup, that’s right — there’s a day dedicated to the very spine of our language, and to join in on the fun, we’ve decided to interview lexicographer Erin McKean.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, October 13: boffo, ralli quilt, zoonosis, pen-testing.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, October 6: overproof, eurhythmics, sundowning, eruv.”
“We're not the first to notice that Twitter is a word-lover's paradise. . . .One avid example: each week @wordnik challenges people to tweet sentences that demonstrate the meaning of one of its word-of-the-day vocabulary words. Funny, rhythmic, and referentially sublime, the winners are almost always little puzzles unto themselves.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, September 29: pediculosis, progeria, homosociality, summer melt.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, September 22: gansey, alligator fruit, kora, sukuks.”
“The Wordnik approach to API design and development using Swagger is interesting. For me, it demonstrates that a clean API spec should not be an afterthought, and a means by which you generate interactive API documentation, or when API discovery becomes an issue. Your entire design, development and management process should center around a meaningful API spec, which will then allow you to deploy your API server, interactive documentation, client code, while also providing API discovery.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, September 15: flageolets, swellegance, alopecia, noodnik.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, September 8: smasual, Manhattanhenge, brucellosis, surströmming.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, September 1: alexithymia, sporran, gwang-dae, styptic.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, August 18: mouseburger, exposome, femtocells, vitreous.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, August 11: Époisses, wormholes, hydrazine, Mobot.”
“Lexicographer Erin McKean loves words. "Words are so lovable," she says. "How could you not love words?" She also loves to sew, particularly vintage-style fashions.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, August 4: whiff whaff, eutrophication, legends, ambo.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, July 20: bingsu, panchayat, glass cliff, reshoring.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, July 13: garrigue, tapada, Rednecksploitation, mendozer.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, July 7: derecho, Kubb, mandals, prêt-à-couture.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, June 30: mutts, tambour, melittin, duckeasies.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, June 23: pachislot, tape bombs, massaman, intercondylar. ”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, June 16: swirlogram, frozen middle, spraywork, aigrette.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, June 8: urticaria, gaokao, turntablism, miche.”
“Hasn’t this just been the most bitchin’ series of Mad Men ever? Season 5 has been full of dramatic cultural changes for our favorite mad men and women, and our friends at Wordnik have picked up on the new slang that our characters are spitting.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, June 2: desquamation, Ulysses contracts, SLATs, chinoise.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, May 19: grexit, brostep, over-sharenting, social jet lag.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, May 12: interdict, sauropod, subluxation, geofencing. ”
“And so it is with the casual fan in mind that I present to you these definitions pulled from the pages of Marvel Comics, each researched and written by the good folks over at Wordnik.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, May 5: wardriving, belted lav, FPC, azan. ”
“Why couldn’t we have had vocabulary lists like this back when I was in school? In honor of this weekend’s opening of hotly-anticipated-by-comic-nerds-everywhere The Avengers, Wordnik has culled together a list of Marvel vocabulary words.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, April 28: bolt, Popo, actigraphy, and nearology.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, April 21: boondocking, particularist, hotelling, bar codes.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, April 14: dark pool, sonification, showrooming, roustabout. ”
“As we steam toward this weekend's 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, Angela Tung has a fine post about Titanic words at the Wordnik blog.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, April 7: mevushal, Showels, fungoes, APTs”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for the Wall Street Journal, March 30: racinos, adularescence, dead-cat space, corobotics.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words for The Wall Street Journal, March 23: MIMO, flexicurity, Drapetomania, nibs.”
“The story of how Wordnik changed [from] a monolithic platform to one based on Micro Services and the implications at the data layer (MongoDB) ...”
“Cloud migration is no easy feat, and the challenges posed by the physical-virtual server shift can lead to loss of time and money. Luckily, this has not been the case for Wordnik, a site that provides example sentences, punctuation, and user comments for millions of English language words. ... [T]his transition often requires initiative on the part of an enterprise that can go so far as to creating tools and frameworks as Wordnik has with Swagger and Caprica, in order to cope with the transition. ”
“Here’s how Wordnik defines their marvel: “Swagger is a specification and complete framework implementation for describing, producing, consuming, and visualizing RESTful web services.” Swagger allows [Klout's] API to have a well-defined contract in JSON, the same format we are using on every single endpoint.”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words for March 17: shengnu, quenelle, romantica, telebot. ”
“Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day, which has gotten everyone at Wordnik thinking about luck and luck words.”
“[10gen] CEO and co-founder Dwight Merriman and Wordnik CTO and technical co-founder Tony Tam will co-present at the GigaOM Structure Data Conference in New York City on March 22, 2012.”
“At 3scale when we are asked how to make it faster and easier for developers to interact with an API without hesitation we say “Swagger””
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words for February 3: pay-fors, kaiseki, socialbots, and jeu perlé.”
“Meggings? "Ill-advised," says Wordnik founder Erin McKean”
“As Wordnik founder and lexicographer Erin McKean told me last month, “If a word is persuasive enough, and if your usage is provocative enough and feels real enough, you can make a word mean what you want it to mean.””
“Do You Speak Super Bowl? ”
“Fashion Jargon: A tFS Interview with Wordsmith Erin McKean ”
“Wordnik is a great place to satisfy your curiosity about words and to interact with other word-lovers ...”
“Joe Hyrkin, Wordnik CEO: Three Things Every CEO Must Do in 2012”
“Wordnik is the first word navigation system that helps people unlock the value of words and phrases to discover what information is most meaningful and matters to them. Wordnik goes beyond traditional dictionary definitions to deliver words in context. ”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words for January 28: Xoloitzcuintli, flexitarians, T-rays, ischemic. ”
“Wordnik was featured on "Eye on the Web," the KNLS radio program sponsored by sculptor Kevin Caron that features wild, wacky and truly wonderful Web sites.”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words for January 21: freekeh, mouse type, quark, weibo.”
“Word maven Erin McKean joins Veronica Rueckert to discuss language. ”
“Established in 2009 -- eons ago in our instant-gratification world -- Wordnik (wordnik.com) is exceedingly democratic, because there are no arbiters. That is, anyone can add a word without a lexicographer looking down her pince-nez (oldie but goodie word for eyeglasses clipped to the nose with a spring).”
“Interview with Wordnik founder Erin McKean on the iDoneThis blog.”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words for January 14: Chollima, neophiliacs, tail-swallowing, consistory.”
“60 seconds with Erin McKean: Erin McKean talks with the New York Post's Brian Moore.”
“There may indeed be a public perception that a dictionary is the authority on language. But the linguistic point of view is that users of the language, not self-appointed arbiters, are its ultimate authorities. There is no single “correct” way when it comes to an ever-evolving semantic system. Wordnik has it right.”
“Users can create lists of favorite words in categories, too. There's a list of favorite verbs as well as favorite "beer words." There's also a Word of the Day section, too. During a recent visit, the daily word was "inkhorn," meaning "a portable case for ink and writing-instruments, made of a horn, or (usually) of wood or metal, formerly in common use in Europe, and still in some parts of the East." Who knew?”
“The Wall Street Journal 2011 Week in Words Roundup”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words for January 7: like-jacking, moitié-moitié, resto-mod, supremes.”
“More Fun Stuff: Wordnik Word Soup: Science Fiction”
“IdeaMensch is a community of people with ideas. We profile entrepreneurs, authors, artists, thought leaders, and others on how they bring ideas to life. This week's profile is Joe Hyrkin, President and CEO of Wordnik.”
“Traditional print dictionaries have long enlisted lexicographers to scrutinize new words as they pop up, weighing their merits and eventually accepting some of them. Not Wordnik, the vast online dictionary ... ”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words, December 24: workampers, Ticos, exoplanets, cop drop. ”
“Thankfully, our friends at Wordnik have put together a handy glossary of some Glee-tastic expressions.”
“Wordnik powers the Wall Street Journal's Week in Words, December 17: Tebowing, PANDAS, RuFraud, and lifestylization.”
“If you're in the cloud, avoid the disk,' and other MongoDB lessons from Wordnik co-founder and vice president of engineering Tony Tam.”
“Dow Jones-owned SmartMoney.com has launched a new tool to educate its readers about the world of personal finance—with help from online dictionary startup Wordnik.”
“Want to know what makes a brandworthy word? Check out what Wordnik's Erin McKean has to say about FUDGE: The Secret Behind Brandworthy Adverterms and Marketing Buzzwords in the COMMPro.biz blog.”
“Wordnik powers the Week in Words, December 3: CARBS, monozukuri, retailtainment and reverse mentoring.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, November 26: ligne claire, holothurian, postprandial somnolence, and straw donors.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, November 19: appumentary, exurbs, kouklitas, BYOD.”
“The first two installments of Word Soup show a great breadth of source material and word types. The first post, from October 28, includes “to go all Statler and Waldorf” (to heckle and criticize from a safe distance) from The Daily Show and “volumptuous” (a blending of voluptuous and lump) from Snooki on Jimmy Kimmel Live. ... I’ll be watching the blog with interest and gratitude—now I can get a taste of the entertaining words without watching the shows most likely to make me go all Statler and Waldorf. ”
“... we were delighted to discover the joys of Wordnik, a site that allows users to get stuck into all manner of words, highlighting their usage in a wide range of literature, linking audio files of their various pronunciations and pooling recent tweets in which specific words have been used. It’s ever so geeky, but it is very, very good.”
“Silicon Valley investors are betting big on Wordnik’s ability to change the way people interact with words ... In a sense, Wordnik wants to grow into the BASF of digital text—it doesn’t make a lot of the words you use, but it wants to make the words you use more interesting. ”
“If you go to Wordnik as a reader, you’ll find the world’s largest collection of English words and usage examples—6.7 million and counting, more than six times the size of the Oxford English Dictionary. But if you go there as a publisher or a software developer, you’ll find a growing set of tools for making your own content more interesting and actionable.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, October 22: unidoor, ideation, craveability, salties.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, October 14: preboggin, hagparazzi, terratomas, bushmeat.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, Oct 8: iso-work, gelehallon, co-working, balise module. ”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, October 1: Kuznets curve, didymium, stingray, stall speed”
“APIs including klout, alibris, posterous, wordnik, and fanfeedr are following a trend of combining testing tool functionality with API documentation. The result is interactive documentation that returns live data to developers, so they can explore new APIs, learn the underlying call structures, and debug methods quickly.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, September 24: Crowd-Funding, Reverse Wealth Effect, Snickometer, CIVETS ”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, September 11-18: racemization, tiraditos, grinding, Masskrugstemmen”
“Bill Webster, Peter Finch, and Greg McQuaid of KFOG's morning show celebrate International Talk Like A Pirate Day with Wordnik Founder Erin McKean. ”
“the best place on the web to find example sentences.”
“Enter Wordnik, a community-focused and -run word world that takes the idea of an online dictionary to a completely new level, largely based on the idea that words are best learned and understood when seen in real-life contexts. ”
““Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, September 3-10: Apopyllus now, cob nobbler, pluerry, hactivism””
“Why look up a word in the dictionary for a boring definition when you can instead look it up on Wordnik, see what others are saying about it and with it, read where it’s come up in the news or strike up a discussion forum about it?!”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, August 29-September 2: graymail, COWs, pink noise, conjunction.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, August 21-27: Phytoscope, ghosting, Kougelhopf, Trustpolitik”
“ "When you see a word why can't you just tap the word to get information about it?" Wordnik is working on ... creating a layer over text that provides "free-range definitions" that live "out in the wild" of the Internet. ”
“Wordnik's Tony Tam to Present at NoSQL Conference August 25, 2011”
“Wordnik has recently gained $8 million worth of new funding with the help of new investor Lucas Venture Group as well as the participation of Baseline Ventures, Roger McNamee, Mohr Davidow Ventures, and FLOODGATE. There were also other private investors.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, August 13-20: bines, oast, Lollywood, obon, guilloche”
“Swagger is the other thing ... that really interested me -- this way to document RESTful web services. Really nice UI, really interactive, they put out all the different pieces ... it's pretty cool. [discussion begins at 30:55]”
“Whether you offer third party access to your APIs, or you offer them up for internal use, you should take a look at adding some Swagger to your step.”
“Language expert Erin McKean, founder of Wordnik.com, says the term — which her site used to brand its new API framework — is sticking because it perfectly communicates boldness without aggression.”
“The specification is language agnostic, and the framework implementation is available in HTML5, Scala and Java. There are also client generators for Scala, Java, Javascript, Ruby, PHP and Actionscript 3.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, August 7-13: fear gauge, Prayer-palooza, super-committee, Ack-Soy”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, July 31-August 6: acquihires, cramming, lithic mulching, runway excursions”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, July 24-30: humanzee, presalt, ginga, First Bloke”
“Wordnik, maker of the most innovative word navigation system, today announced that Bradley Horowitz, Vice President of Product Management for Google and longtime Silicon Valley executive, would join its board of directors. This is Horowitz's first board appointment.”
“In essence, Wordnik wants to identify and supply relevant content based on words within a webpage. The company is still deep in user interface experiments and is unsure how this will play out, but knows that there needs to be more than just a link to content.”
“Google+ kingpin Bradley Horowitz has joined the board of Wordnik, which has also just raised another round of funding of $8 million. It’s the first board seat ever for Horowitz, who has been a bit busy of late launching the search giant’s first successful social networking product.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, July 15-23: autologous, metabolomics, False Nine, topmarked”
“No such thing as a bad word? Erin McKean is a lexicographical rebel.”
“Wordnik has a fun post up about the language of the Harry Potter books & movies.”
“Wordnik powers the WSJ Week in Words, July 8-14: kispet, strangle, basa, Teegeeack”
“Wordnik, maker of the web's first word navigation system, today announced its new Word Graph API for online content and commerce partners. Developed using Wordnik's Word Graph -- the world's largest and most comprehensive graph of words and their meaning -- the API provides the first-ever automated context discovery capability to help partners offer increased value to their users beyond standard word look-up. ”
“Now comes something new on the API front: Word Graph is the latest result of some three years of algorithm development around analyzing the digital text that Wordnik has collected from partners, to understand the relationship between words in order to derive meaning. Word Graph matches content based on digital text from partners who need to understand more of what their content says and is, and to help them and their services make decisions based on that understanding.”
“Erin McKean, Wordnik Founder, writes for THE WORD column in the Boston Globe”
“Wordnik, the maker of the web's first word navigation system, today announced that Joe Hyrkin, a veteran in the areas of emerging businesses, social media and search, has been appointed as president and CEO to join founder Erin McKean and co-founder Tony Tam in leading the company into its next phase of growth.”
“What does it all mean? For nine million words of the English language, Wordnik delivers more than a definition. Founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik claims to have the word’s most complete map of the language you are currently reading.”