Our aptitude testing service has always included a measurement of general knowledge through our English vocabulary test. Our founder Johnson O’Connor was passionately interested in words and believed that a large English vocabulary was extremely important in life. After all, words are our tools of thought!
Below is a mix of free and paid resources (most have a free trial option) to help you expand your word knowledge. Building your vocabulary is one of the most impactful things you can do for your career!
Resources for All Ages
WORDBOOK web application
Our proprietary Wordbook vocabulary-building system is available for free online and is suitable for all learning levels. The 1,440 words from our Wordbook series are split into eight levels of increasing difficulty. Start at the beginning of the level you place into and work through the whole series to improve your vocabulary.
An online interactive English dictionary and thesaurus that helps you find the meanings of words and draw connections to associated words.
More than just “the world’s biggest online dictionary, by number of words”, this site shows definitions from multiple sources, and includes lots of other word relationships – synonyms, hyponyms, meronyms, and even hypernyms.
Test your vocabulary and, for each answer you get right, freerice.com donates 10 grains of rice through the World Food Programme to help end hunger.
This classic dictionary’s site also includes vocabulary-building games and quizzes to test your knowledge.
This site offers a mix of free and paid tools. We especially like their curated vocabulary and reading lists.
A visual dictionary! Search for a word and up pops a brightly-colored interactive graphic that changes with every new selection.
Beginner – Intermediate Resources
Learn words through memes and comic books. A fun resource for younger people or visual learners.
Designed for vocabulary-building in the school setting (but available for individual learners), Membean offers multimodal learning for all learning styles and a program that’s designed to reinforce word retention.
Wordflow is a predictive tool that analyzes your reading level to deliver the words you’ll need to know before you read them.
Wordcraft offers an adaptive game with an emphasis on Greek and Latin root words. Check out their free pdf of 100 vocabulary words.
A very simple site where you can play a fast-paced timed word game, with three levels of difficulty. Not as easy as it sounds!
Advanced Resources
Are you already a logophile? These resources offer a deeper dive into the origin of language.
What is it and where did we get it – tenterhook, gimlet, cordwainer? The creation of Doug Harper, a former high school teacher turned journalist, this free online etymology dictionary tells you almost anything you’d need to know about almost any word you can think to look up.
A blog by author David Wilton about words and phrases, roots, uses, and other aspects of etymology. Click on The Big List to browse topics. There’s also a link to his book, Word Myths – Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends, in which the author “…debunks some of the most spectacularly wrong word histories…” like does Ring Around the Roses really have anything to do with the Black Plague?
Former BBC studio manager, radio show host, cider museum curator, dictionary entry writer for the Oxford Dictionary of New Words, and last-but-not-least author, Michael Quinion created this site where he investigates word origins and histories. There’s a Pronunciation link and a Surprise Page, for a word or phrase of the day – what is the origin of shufty?
Since 1996 linguistic anthropologist, Dr. Stephen Chrisomalis, has been assembling words into this comprehensive site which includes collections of lost words, glossaries, and more.
“Dr. Goodword” (a.k.a linguist Dr. Robert Beard) curates this site which includes lists like “the 100 most beautiful words in English.”