About TextyBack

What it does

Type a word such as rain, hangover or money, and TextyBack goes looking through the historical record for the words that once did the same work: dialect terms from the north of England, slang from the Georgian street, and quiet coinages nobody quite kept. Each entry gives you a plain definition, a sentence showing the word in modern use, the century and root it comes from, and the reference works that attest it. Sources sit quietly at the foot of every entry, so the evidence is yours to check.

Who it is for

Writers tired of using the same word twice, crossword solvers, students of etymology, teachers after a livelier synonym, and anyone who suspects the language holds more than the dictionary app suggests. Nothing here needs an account: the search and the collections are open to everyone. Sign in only if you want to keep a shelf of your own.

Who builds it

TextyBack is an independent editorial project, run by the people who compile and edit its entries rather than by a dictionary publisher. Every lookup is grounded in published reference works — the Historical Thesaurus of English, the Oxford English Dictionary, Johnson's Dictionary of 1755, Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, Bosworth-Toller and the Middle English Dictionary — with individual etymologists credited separately as further reading.

Corrections, additions and good-natured arguments about a date are all welcome. The contact page reaches the editors directly.