Patch notes

Change log 2017-07-22:

• Re-enabled wildcard support for search terms. If you write aw*th it should henceforth yield awarth, wheras *aw would yield a words ending with aw, e.g. aw, baw, daw, gaw, maw etc.
• Increased comment field size.
• Added a polyfill for requestAnimationFrame to enable scrolling animations for Android devices.

Mostly repairs today! After last week's big word list update, this one is far less glamorous — but if the site has been misbehaving for you, it should be behaving now.

Signing in

• If you've been unable to get onto the site at all recently, please try again — the problem is fixed.
• It affected people who had asked us to remember them from an earlier visit, and it could stop pages from loading entirely. You may need to sign in once more, and then you're set.
• Nothing on your account was touched while this was going on. Your word lists, contributions and posts are all where you left them.

Links in posts and notes

• Long links look like links again, showing the site they point to instead of sprawling over several lines.
• Hover over one and you'll still see exactly where it leads.

Elsewhere

• Better tools behind the scenes for spotting problems like this one, so they get found sooner.
• Some plumbing work on how updates reach the site. You shouldn't notice a thing, which is rather the point.

aldaleon

Change log 2026-09-13:

Major update: v34 → v100.

• Updated landing and phrases page design with more visibility into the various tools we offer our users, including practicing with crosswords, flashcards, Sage and word lists. As well as encouraging more contributions through Discuss and the dictionary itself.

aldaleon

Change log 2026-09-13 (B):

• Added missing phrases from Eldamo.

aldaleon

Change log 2026-09-13 (C):

• Disabled Google Ads from being injected in the midst of a Phrase.

aldaleon

Change log 2026-09-14:

• Strengthened bot protection. Feeling really bullish about this round.

I do want mention that that those of you who haven't been able to log in since a few weeks back should have full access restored as of Sep 8!

aldaleon

Change log 2026-09-18:

• Upgraded the search index, addressing the following issues:
  • Duplicates: about 419,000 duplicate rows removed. Unique keys on both tables now stop them from returning.
  • Missing entries: 185 entries that had no search index at all are indexed, including 490371 laivelyávë, the one that started this.
  • Missing terms: 160 entries were missing search terms. They now include phrase forms, shown the same way as car- → cared.
  • Phrases: every word in every phrase is indexed, including words with no dictionary link, and each row carries its phrase's language, so language-filtered searches find them.

aldaleon

Change log 2026-09-24:

Big update today! Search now knows what words mean, not just how they're spelled.

Looking for a thing finds its kinds

• Search "birds" and the lark, the nightingale and the woodpecker come with it — 266 entries that didn't show up before. "Rivers" brings the rivulets, pools and waterfalls.
• "Trees" and "tree" now answer alike, as do compounds like "mallorn tree".
• Fewer wrong answers, too: "elves" no longer returns entries that merely contain the word "grey".

Trails through the dictionary

• Above your results you'll find what your word is a kind of, and the kinds of it. Birch leads up to tree, woody plant, plant; tree leads down to oak, alder, mallorn.
• Tap any of them to go there.

English words nobody wrote down

• Nothing here was ever glossed "bungalow", yet an Early Quenya word means one. Searches like that used to find nothing; now they find the word.

Adding entries

• The Sense field suggests wordings already in use, and the meanings behind them. Taking a suggestion puts your entry alongside its relatives instead of on its own.

Elsewhere

• A better page to look at when the site is being updated.

Known issues:

• About 1,200 definitions are still waiting for manual review to settle their meaning. I'll need to build some sort of audit tool for these. It shouldn't have a major impact on the overall dictionary and the words should still be discoverable - just the accuracy of how they are expanded can be improved.

• Malicious bots were deliberately attempting to take our website down by pulling the full version history for a very expensive entry in the dictionary. I've implemented several mitigations to make it harder to topple us over. Hopefully it'll work.

aldaleon