How Word Holder Works
A vocabulary tracker with built-in spaced repetition. Look up words while reading, and the app schedules them for review so you actually remember them.
1. Read something. Click words.
Bring any text in your target language into your library — paste from an article, a book chapter, a blog post, anything — using Import text on the home screen. The text opens in a clean reader with comfortable typography.
While reading, tap any word to see its meaning:
- A short translation appears instantly, pulled from Wiktionary-based dictionaries (fast, free).
- Tap See full definition to load the AI-generated long definition when you want more depth.
- If the word has multiple possible meanings (like Italian letto — "bed" or the past participle of "to read"), you'll get a lemma picker so you can choose.
- Words you've already tapped get a subtle dotted underline when you re-open a text, so you can see what you've already covered.
Every tap saves the word and the sentence it appeared in — the sentence comes back as context when the word shows up in your daily review.
Anonymous accounts get 100 KB of text storage; signed-in accounts get 5 MB. The meter is visible on the library and import pages.
Don't know what to read? Use "Help me choose"
On the Import text screen, switch to the URL tab and click Help me choose (next to the URL field). A picker opens with a curated list of reading sources for your current language, grouped by News, Culture, Science, Sport, and Easy reading. Each source shows its difficulty and whether it's usually free or mixed access.
Two ways to use it:
- Open site — opens the source's homepage in a new tab so you can pick an article yourself, then paste the URL back into the URL tab.
- Random link — grabs a fresh article from that source (picked from a backend-maintained pool) and feeds it straight into the import flow — no browsing required. Great when you just want something to read right now.
Sources are curated for every supported language. The backend refreshes the article pool every few hours and only keeps links that our article extractor can actually read, so the "Random link" button almost always lands on a usable page. Fair-use cap: 5 Random link picks per 24 hours per account — Open site stays unlimited.
Explain this form Experimental
If the word's meaning isn't what's tripping you up — you roughly know what it means but not why it's written like this — the popover has a second Explain tab with a short grammar note for that word in that sentence. Italian and Spanish only at the moment.
Available to everyone — the popover always shows the Explain tab next to Meaning. Because it's still experimental, it may be slower than Meaning, change without notice, or disappear.
What you'll see
When the explanation is ready, three short sections:
- In this sentence — what the clicked form is doing right here (e.g. \"fosse" is subjunctive because the clause expresses doubt).
- Why this form — the mechanical reason (clitic fusion, article contraction, past participle with auxiliary, etc.).
- Compare — a one-line contrast with the simpler or nearby alternative ("glielo" vs "lo", "del" vs "di + il").
Follow-up chips
Below the three sections you may see up to three pill-shaped buttons. Tap one to re-ask about the same word from a different angle without closing the popover:
- Break it down — split the form into its component parts.
- Literal meaning — the word-for-word reading, ignoring idiom.
- Why this tense? — focus on tense choice in this sentence.
- Why subjunctive? — focus on mood choice.
- Why this pronoun? / Why this article? — focus on the pronoun or article specifically.
- Why this word order? — focus on sentence-level word order.
Other messages you might see
- "Nothing unusual here — standard form for this sentence." — there's no remarkable grammar point to call out; keep reading.
- "Couldn't explain this form right now." — the call failed or timed out. Hit Retry.
2. Or type a word in the search box
You can also look up a word directly from the home screen — useful when you're not reading a specific text. Type it in, pick your language, press Enter. If you type a conjugated form, it finds the base word automatically. Not sure about spelling? You'll get suggestions. Multi-word entries work too — useful for English phrasal verbs like look up or Italian expressions like a proposito.
3. Your word list
Every word you look up — whether by tapping in the reader or typing in the search box — is added to your personal list. Click any word to expand its definition. Use the level control in the toolbar to adjust how much detail you see:
- Simple — just the English translation
- Standard — definitions and example sentences
- Immersion — full detail in the original language
The toolbar also has a text filter so you can narrow your list to a specific word or substring, and a tag filter for topic-based views.
Difficulty band. Each word shows a coloured letter on the right of its row indicating how common it is in the language — based on its corpus frequency rank, where rank 1 is the single most common word:
- A — Basic: top 200 most common words
- B — Intermediate: ranks 201–1000
- C — Advanced: ranks 1001–5000
- D — Rare: rank > 5000 (or not in the frequency list at all)
Hover the badge to see the exact rank. Same thresholds across all languages. The home dashboard rolls these up into an Active vocabulary by difficulty panel showing how many words you've looked up at each band over the last 7 days, 30 days, and year — useful for noticing whether you're coasting on basics or pushing into harder vocabulary.
4. Organize with tags
Click the + button on any word to add a tag (e.g. "Chapter 3", "Travel", "Food"). Then filter your word list by tag using the dropdown in the toolbar.
5. Daily review (spaced repetition)
Every word you look up enters a spaced-repetition schedule. The app tells you how many words are due today on the home screen, and a 2-minute review session is enough to keep words moving toward long-term memory.
Reviews are fill-in-the-blank: you see an example sentence with the word hidden, recall it in your head, then rate how well you remembered it:
- Again — I forgot. Resets the interval to 1 day.
- Hard — I struggled. Shorter next interval.
- Good — I remembered. Standard SM-2 progression.
- Easy — Too easy. Longer next interval.
Words you remember reliably get spaced further apart (1d → 6d → ~15d → …). Words you struggle with come back sooner. After ~90 days without a miss, a word is marked learned.
If you tapped the word inside a text you were reading, the review uses that same sentence for context — so you're quizzed on words in real prose you've seen before, not generic dictionary examples.
When you finish the due cards (or have none today), the review screen offers a Practice option to revisit non-due words anytime — practice sessions don't change the schedule.
6. Quiz yourself (sentence quizzes)
A separate feature from daily review. After saving 4+ words, go to the Quizzes page and generate an AI-powered sentence quiz using your recent vocabulary. Three quiz modes are available:
- Drag & Drop — drag words into sentence blanks
- Multiple Choice — pick the right word from four options
- Type In — type the missing word yourself
Sentence quizzes are good for varied practice; daily review is the retention engine.
Languages
Word Holder supports Italian, Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Bulgarian, and English as learning languages. Definitions are available in English. See the languages page for the current list and roadmap.
Browser extension
Install the Chrome extension to look up words directly on any webpage while you read. Words are saved to the same account as the website.
Your account
Word Holder works without a visible login — every visitor gets an anonymous account automatically, so lookups, reviews, and the spaced-repetition schedule all work from the first visit. Log in (Google or email) to keep your words permanently and sync across devices. Without an account, your progress is tied to this browser only.
Signing in also unlocks the larger text storage quota (5 MB vs. 100 KB anonymous) so you can keep a bigger reading library.