You use thousands of them every day, but how often do you ponder their origins? Words are the cells in the lifeblood of the English language. Wordigins — short for word origins — allows you to test your lexical knowledge with more than 1,500 words spanning eight categories including arts, food, money, brands, imitative, imported, sports, and random, and at three difficulty levels.

Modern English itself is less than 700 years old. It emerged in its standardized form with the arrival of the printing press in the 1400s from the dialect spoken in the East Midlands region of England, home of Oxford and Cambridge universities. English mutated further with its spread to the Americas and beyond. Its story is one of conquest and defeat, colonization and commerce. Wordigins takes you on a tour of that history and evolution of our language. It offers interesting bits of etymology and teaches you about cultures and civilizations. 

Choose your category and difficulty level, and then enjoy as many 10-question games as you please. With scores of question types, including drag-and-drop ordering, language of origin, century introduced to English, and more, it never gets boring. With each answer — whether it’s correct or incorrect — you’ll unveil a new nugget of knowledge. And after each game, you’ll see your score immediately, be able to add that to the leaderboard, share it socially, and compare your results to those of others around the world. 

What are you waiting for? Start your Wordigins adventure today!