Diachronica: Word Origins

Every English word is an immigrant. Trace the languages it crossed, the relatives it kept, and the centuries it travelled to reach you.

Every English word is an immigrant.

Some arrived recently. Others crossed continents and centuries, changing shape and meaning along the way. Diachronica tells their stories.

START WITH A WORD Choose the daily word, pick an example, or search for your own. Diachronica gathers the story, historical forms, pronunciation when a sourced recording exists, and the evidence behind the journey.

FOLLOW THE JOURNEY Watch a word move toward modern English on a map. Read each form in order on the timeline. See how its use changed when the corpus data supports it.

MEET THE RELATIVES Cognates carry family resemblances across languages. Every displayed cognate has a source mark, so the evidence is always within reach.

READ IT YOUR WAY Choose Parchment by day, Scriptorium at night, or high contrast whenever you want it. Diachronica also includes screen-reader labels, keyboard controls, reduced motion, clear loading and error states, and a short guided tour.

FOLLOW THE SOURCES Word histories combine Wiktionary-derived etymology with expert datasets including Lexibank, IE-CoR, and WOLD. ASJP and CLICS³ add cross-language context. COCA and Google Books Ngrams support usage views when available. The in-app source ledger explains the datasets and their licenses.

English did not grow up alone. Open a word and meet everyone it travelled with.