About Word Holder

A personal vocabulary tracker for language learners, built by someone who needed one.

The story

I started Word Holder while learning Italian. Every time I came across an unfamiliar word, I'd look it up, write it on paper, and promptly forget both the word and the paper. I wanted something that would just remember the words I looked up — and let me go back to them later.

That idea grew into Word Holder: a tool that saves every word you search, schedules it for spaced-repetition review so you actually remember it, and lets you organize your vocabulary with tags. It now supports Italian, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, and Bulgarian.

What it is (and isn't)

Word Holder is a vocabulary tracker, not a translation service or a language course. It's for people who are already reading, watching, or listening in another language and want a better way to hold on to the words they encounter.

You look up a word, it gets saved, and over time you build a personal dictionary of the words you actually need — not a generic word list someone else made. Spaced repetition does the remembering for you: every day the app tells you which words are due and a short review session keeps them moving toward long-term memory — no flashcard creation required.

How it's built

The backend is written in Rust, the frontend in React with TypeScript. Big attribution to Claude, who picked up after the basic functionality was implemented manually in prehistoric times. There's also a Chrome extension for looking up words directly on any webpage.

It's still evolving. If you have ideas or feedback, get in touch.

Attribution

Dictionary definitions and examples are derived from Wiktionary, processed via the Kaikki.org dataset. Wiktionary content is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Word Holder also generates explanations, quizzes, and examples using AI. AI-generated content is not part of the Wiktionary dataset and is not covered by CC BY-SA.