About
The Common English OpenList is made by Ryan Kamp. It grew out of the English OpenList, a word list with its own rules, which the CEOL Universe now holds as one of its parts.
Why it exists
Ask whether a string is a word, and the answer depends on which dictionary you ask. Dictionaries and word lists disagree, for several reasons:
- Timing: They are updated at different times, and some are no longer updated at all.
- Scope: Specialized and technical terms are in scope for some and not for others.
- Standards: Some leave out slang or profanity on purpose.
- Definitions: Each has its own rules for what a word is, such as whether it may hold a space, a hyphen, or an accent, and its own way of taking in a new entry, from a community of editors or from an institution's staff.
The CEOL Universe does not settle the question. For each candidate, it records which published lists hold it, which could not have held it, and how it came in, in versions fixed at a date, so that whoever settles the question can see the evidence.
The family
- The CEOL Universe
- The inventory: every candidate, with its provenance, in versions that never change once released.
- The English OpenList
- A word list with its own rules, kept here as a dated subset of the universe.
- Ars Magna
- An anagram finder that shares the English OpenList's dictionary.
Licenses
- The data
- CC BY-SA 4.0, as the terms of Wiktionary and of wordfreq require. Every version ships its sources' notices.
- The code
- MIT.
- This site's text
- CC BY-SA 4.0, except the technical report, which is CC BY 4.0.
Language models in the data
The English OpenList decided some of the entries of its valid list with a language model, Google Gemini 3 Flash
Preview: through a verification pipeline that used it, or by its verdict alone. Its synthetic engine, whose code
does not survive, made other strings by affixing, by chemical substitution, by scientific prefixing, and by Greek
plurals; the English OpenList's page gives its author's account of the methods. The
universe marks every such row in model_or_engine, so a list can keep or drop them.
Requests and contact
Requests to withhold, correct, or restore a source or a row go to ryanjosephkamp@gmail.com. A request is acknowledged within 7 days and acted on within 14 days of its verification, and each version's change log records every withholding, as counts.
This version
Version 1.0, built October 25, 2026: 10,020,150rows rows. A released version never changes; a correction comes as a new version with a change log.
The author
Ryan Kamp makes the Common English OpenList and its sister projects.