Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch
This month I’d like to tell you about a website that I use nearly every day. I do a lot of writing for the club website, several newsletters and my personal websites. LibreOffice and Scribus are the two main programs I use to edit the written material. The WordHippo is a site I often use for tools to (hopefully) help me do a better job with my content.
WordHippo is an Australian site that was originally launched in 2008 to find rhyming words. It has evolved to include a synonym finder, dictionary, antonym finder, word finder and many other word tools. There are many sites on the internet that do these things. This is the only one I have found where everything is on one easy to navigate page.
The site’s “Privacy Statement” and “Terms of Service” pages are clear and easy to read. Although they state that they use a third-party to provide monetization technologies for the site, I have never seen any advertising. I’ve even disabled my ad blockers to test this.
A complete list of word actions include:
• Synonyms – the thesaurus is the default home page.
• Antonyms – gives an extensive list of opposite words.
• Definitions – a pretty much standard dictionary.
• Rhymes – I would have never found a rhyme for lagniappe without this section.
• Sentences – gives several examples of word usage.
• Translations – only translates from English to other languages.
• Find Words – you can select the number of letters and find words for Words With Friends, Scrabble and Crosswords. You can specify starting or ending letters. There are many more finding functions.
• Word Forms – finds plurals, past tense, present tense and more.
• Pronunciations – reads words and sentences aloud.
For the most part, the website is easy to use. It utilizes a tabbed layout. Entering a word in one section carries over to the other functions. There are apps for both iOS and Android. I haven’t tested them. Give WordHippo a try. Everything is free to use and there are no up‑sells for a paid version.
Thanks for reading.