WantWords

WantWords is a free, open-source reverse dictionary built by THUNLP (Tsinghua Natural Language Processing Lab). Instead of searching for a word's meaning, you type a description, a vague idea, or a whole concept, and it surfaces matching words or phrases. It handles four language pairs: Chinese-Chinese, Chinese-English, English-Chinese, and English-English. This makes it a practical pick for writers fighting tip-of-the-tongue moments, translators hunting for precise equivalents, and language learners who think in meanings rather than words. The tool is packed with useful filters. You can narrow results by part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, idiom, phrase), word length, or stroke count for Chinese characters. Sorting options include relevance, pinyin, strokes, alphabet, and a cluster view that groups semantically similar words together — handy when you're exploring a family of related terms. The English reverse dictionary adds a word type filter (word vs. phrase/idiom) and lets you sort by alphabetical or length order. A recent update added the Material Library (素材库), which pulls high-quality example sentences from authoritative Chinese sources like People's Daily and "Learning China". It also includes parallel and balanced sentences useful for official writing. That's a fresh, practical upgrade for anyone drafting formal Chinese documents. WantWords is free, requires no registration, and its code is open-source on GitHub. It runs entirely in the browser with no app to install. That said, it's not a full translation suite — English coverage is decent but more basic than Chinese-focused searches. If you need automated workflows or API access, this isn't the tool; it's designed for quick, human-driven word discovery. For that purpose, it's a strong, no-cost alternative to traditional thesauruses.