Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A dictionary of untranslatable words from around the world
Have you ever come across a word in another language that just perfectly captures a feeling or concept you can't quite express in your own tongue? I created coolforeignwords.com because I wanted to share those "aha" moments with fellow language lovers, and created a website to make those words easier to find. So, whether you're a word nerd, a traveler, or just curious about the world, please feel free to visti my website. Try it out and please share your feedback. It's still very early stage, so would love any advice. Thank you
Coolforeignwords.com is a searchable dictionary of untranslatable words from languages around the world. It collects words that express feelings or concepts difficult to communicate in English, designed for language… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. A dictionary of untranslatable words from around the world launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
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I began this in late September purely on the whims of frustration with thesaurus.com, which does not bother to focus the input box! So I made my own site that focuses the input box. And because I wanted a thesaurus where I could type just the term in the address bar (eg type carefulwords.com/word) to get my results. It is very rough around the edges right now. There are far too many synonyms, which themselves are only organized alphabetically. I hope to take the site in a more inspiring direction over time than merely synonyms. Perhaps euphemisms, or other poetic uses from the past, or…
2022 · carefulwords.com · its alternatives →
- 2IC
As non-native English speakers, we're often advised to avoid overusing intensifiers like "very". This is a simple app to find synonyms of "very x" phrases that are not always possible to find using a standard thesaurus. Built it using OpenAI, FastAPI, and MongoDB (to cache the results).
2024 · insteadofvery.com · its alternatives →
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COOLPHABETS▲75Helping kids around the world learn their native alphabets.
2020 · coolphabets.com · its alternatives →
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Hi! Wanted to share the project I really wanted to have. TLDR; this app lets you create your own list of words and you get a Duolingo-like experience (kind of, still needs a lot of features) practicing those words in their context. My English is not the best but not the worst either. But I realized I can't boost it up after a certain level! In my belief, in order to truly learn a language, you need to be exposed to that language often. Vocabulary is the key factor here if you really want to improve in any language. My experience is that when I read a book to improve my English vocabulary, I…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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- 7AW
I’ve long thought that the Word of the Day was a wasted genre. The goal should be to give you words you can use; to enrich your understanding of words you already know; or at least to use words to tell you something neat about the world. Instead, what you usually get is words that will never be used in conversation, held up as curios. Some examples from Dictionary.com’s daily email: thewless, balladmonger, vagility, contextomy. These words are... not useful. I’ve always thought I could do better. My friend Ben recently created a daily puzzle game, called Bracket City, launched here on HN…
2025 · its alternatives →
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Polyword▲98Snap at things to translate them in different languages! 📸
2017 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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SuperWordly▲86Learn English words while doing other stuff online
2023 · superwordly.com · its alternatives →
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StickerWords▲80Learn new words from the world around you
Jun 2026 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Effortlessly hyphenate English (US) words with HyphenateIt. Ideal for writers, editors, and language enthusiasts. Fast, accurate, multilingual hyphenation tool.
2010 · softhyphen.com · its alternatives →
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A proof-of-concept language learning app that uses LLMs to generate definitions of unknown words using only previously mastered vocabulary.
Dec 2025 · simedw.com · its alternatives →
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- 18IB
2019 · zacs.site · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! In the last couple of weeks I've been working on Cranki: Cranki = Crosswords + Anki. (It's a stupid name tbh, haha) I like doing crosswords in Spanish (to learn vocab) but none of the apps out there allowed me to use my own list of words that I come across. So I built one instead. It's entirely client-side. No server, no database, no accounts, etc. Your words and stats are stored in local storage. I built this for myself but let me know if you like it!
Apr 2026 · cranki.app · its alternatives →
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- 21HW
A small site created to see the hell world example in many different languages. I got tired of sites which only showed 10-30 languages. I'm sure there are some inaccuracies (some languages are not I languages per se).
May 2026 · languages.jdunn.dev · its alternatives →
- 22IW
As hard as I tried, I didn't find a modern language learning book that's either very academic, or like "master a language with my super-magic great method in 3 months". So I dug into the academic research, tried many techniques myself, saw what worked, wrote a book for learners of any language and any level, and made it free without ads. Today, finally, a 2 years-long project ends. I hope it helps anyone. Book's here: https://thehardway.guide/ Cheers
2023 · its alternatives →
- 23AM
Word definitions are provided by https://dictionaryapi.dev/, built with html/js/css and a little jQuery
2024 · oliverpk2000.github.io · its alternatives →
- 24GA
In the dark old days when I was uninspired and couldn't come up with a name for a project I'd hop onto my old pal Google Translate and see if a keyword associated with my name "sounded cool in German" If it did, and the domain was unused I'd scoop it up and use it. This process took a while, I'd try German, French, Russian, Armenian, Latvian, etc trying to find something cool that wasn't already being used. So I built http://www.catelus.com/ It translates your keyword into more than 30 different languages and checks if your-word-in-german.com and your-word-in-polish.com are…
2016 · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →