A word, picked at random.
Filter by part of speech, length, or starting letter. Tap any word to flip it for a definition. Built for vocab drills, charades, naming things, and getting unstuck.
Filters & settings
About this generator
Most "random word" sites scrape a giant dictionary file and call it a day. You ask for a word and get back something like diaeresis or preternaturally — technically a word, useless for charades. We went the other direction.
The list here is roughly 600 hand-picked common English words, sorted into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, then trimmed for usefulness. No proper nouns. No archaic spellings. Nothing that needs a footnote. The bias is toward concrete, picturable words because that's what people actually need: a teacher running an ESL drill, a couple stuck on Pictionary, a writer who needs a seed, a parent doing flash cards.
Filters do real work. Min and max length narrow the dataset before the draw, and the starts-with field accepts a single letter (any case). If you ask for "verbs starting with X, exactly four letters," you'll get fewer words than you asked for — that's the dataset being honest, not a bug. The unique-within-a-batch toggle is on by default because handing the same word to a Scattergories team twice in a row defeats the point. Click any result to flip the chip and see a short, plain-English definition baked into the page.
What this isn't: a thesaurus, a Scrabble word checker, or a way to settle "is X really a word." It's a seed dispenser. If you need a more structured prompt, the writing-prompt generator hands you a full sentence; if you only need a starting letter for Scattergories, the letter picker is one click lighter.
What people use it for
Vocabulary practice
Pull five nouns, write a sentence with each. The flip-for-definition chip means kids self-check without flipping a textbook.
ESL classrooms
Filter for short, common words; drill pronunciation in batches of ten. Share the URL with your class so everyone gets the same set.
Naming things
Project codenames, pet names, D&D taverns. Set part of speech to "adjective + noun" by running it twice. Way better than another AI-generated mush.
Brainstorming & design sprints
Pick three random nouns, force a connection. The constraint is the point — random seeds beat blank pages every time.
Charades and Pictionary
Filter to nouns or verbs, set count to one, hand the phone to whoever's drawing. No more arguing about whether "happy" is too easy.
Writing prompts & freewriting
One word, ten minutes, no editing. The constraint stops the cursor-blinking-for-an-hour problem.
How it works
The picking
We start with the full word list, drop entries that don't match your filters (part of speech, length range, starts-with), then draw indices using crypto.getRandomValues with rejection sampling. Rejection sampling matters: a naïve random % N is biased when N doesn't divide evenly into 2³². We re-roll any draw that lands outside the largest clean multiple of N, which makes every word in the filtered set exactly equally likely.
Uniqueness
With "Allow repeats" off (the default), we draw without replacement: each picked index is removed from the pool before the next draw. That's a straight Fisher-Yates partial shuffle in spirit. With repeats on, every draw is independent.
State & sharing
Filters live in the URL query string (?pos=noun&min=4&max=8&start=s&count=10) via history.replaceState. Recent results are stored in localStorage for the last 10 batches. Loading the URL anywhere recreates the exact configuration; the embed iframe accepts the same query string.
Common questions
Where do the words come from?
About 600 hand-picked common English words, sorted into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They're chosen for usefulness in games and vocabulary practice — not the most obscure dictionary words, not the most boring high-frequency ones either.
Can I get definitions?
Click any word in the result list to flip the chip and see a short definition. Definitions are baked into the page, so they work offline and don't ping any external API.
How do I get only short words, or only long ones?
Set the min and max length fields. The generator only draws words that fit. If your filters are too tight (say "verbs starting with X, exactly four letters"), you'll get fewer words than requested — that's the dataset being honest, not a bug.
Are the words appropriate for kids and classrooms?
Yes. The list is curated for general audiences — no slurs, no slang that needs context, nothing your school filter would flag. We use it for ESL drills, charades, and vocab quizzes ourselves.
Will I get the same word twice?
Not in a single batch — uniqueness is on by default. Toggle Allow repeats if you want a draw with replacement (useful for exposure-based vocab drills where repetition is the point).
Can I share or embed a specific configuration?
The URL updates as you change settings. Copy the URL bar, paste it anywhere, and the page rebuilds with the same filters. The embed iframe accepts the same query parameters.
What's the difference between this and a writing prompt?
A word is a single seed — perfect for drawing exercises, charades, or vocab. A writing prompt is a full sentence-length idea. Use the prompt generator when you need more structure than one word gives you.
Related generators
Same neighborhood — different question.