OUTLIER

The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.

The Word DNA of OUTLIER

Every word anyone has found, where it came from, and how far back that goes.

134,481words found92,341roots58,332traced107,029rarely found

Every word in OUTLIER has a history. Word DNA is what the game knows about it: the language a word’s deepest traceable ancestor belongs to, the family that language sits in, how far back it goes, and how many people have ever found it.

Nothing here is a leaderboard of skill. It is a map of the vocabulary 134,481 found words wide, and every number on it is a list you can open. You have your own version of it too, built only from the words you have found.

How far back it goes

When the ancestor languages were spoken — not how old the English words are. Why that difference matters →

Reconstructedbefore writing
3,223 words · 12.2%3 languages: Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic

Languages nobody wrote down. We know them only by comparing their descendants, so there is no first attested date to give.

Ancientto c. 500 AD
12,618 words · 47.8%5 languages: Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit

Written, and old enough that the Roman empire was still a going concern.

Medievalc. 500-1500
5,151 words · 19.5%12 languages: Middle English, Old English, Old French

The thousand years that gave English most of its everyday furniture.

Modernc. 1500-
5,432 words · 20.6%39 languages: French, German, Italian

Living languages, dated from the form that did the lending.

By family

A family is a group of languages. Every one of these is a list.

Italic33.7%Germanic22.3%Romance15.4%Hellenic12.7%Proto8.8%Semitic1.8%Indic1.3%Celtic0.8%Slavic0.7%Japonic0.6%Iranian0.5%Austronesian0.5%Sinitic0.4%Uto-Aztecan0.2%Turkic0.2%Uralic0.1%Quechuan0.1%Bantu0.1%Koreanic0%Eskaleut0%

Every language

All 59 of them, down to the ones with a handful of words — this list used to stop at twenty, which is why Yiddish was never on it. Shares are of the 26,424 traced words whose deepest ancestor we can name; the other 31,908 have an etymology but no single language at the end of it.

  1. Latin8,905c. 700 BC-600 AD@wordnerdfound 248, more than anyone
  2. Ancient Greek3,356c. 800-300 BC@belladimples1found 99, more than anyone
  3. Proto-Indo-European2,323c. 4500-2500 BC@shopperfound 153, more than anyone
  4. Middle English2,038c. 1150-1500@eileenn701found 50, more than anyone
  5. French1,904modern form, c. 1500-@carynvfound 46, more than anyone
  6. Old English1,108c. 450-1150@katuefound 44, more than anyone
  7. Proto-Germanic884c. 500 BC-200 AD@shopperfound 58, more than anyone
  8. German808modern form, c. 1500-@nanabnanafound 25, more than anyone
  9. Old French757c. 800-1400@nanabnanafound 23, more than anyone
  10. Italian502modern form, c. 1500-@pezinvadersfound 35, more than anyone
  11. Spanish388modern form, c. 1500-@franklinfound 14, more than anyone
  12. Arabic323classical, c. 600-@chocolate08found 17, more than anyone
  13. Middle French308c. 1340-1610@tevzfound 10, more than anyone
  14. Sanskrit217c. 1500-600 BC@alokpifound 16, more than anyone
  15. Dutch205modern form, c. 1500-@wickedsmartfound 8, more than anyonePATRON
  16. Old Norse179c. 700-1350@eileenn701found 7, more than anyone
  17. Japanese162modern form, c. 1500-@burtsmommyfound 10, more than anyone
  18. Hebrew131c. 1000-200 BC@goonerfound 13, more than anyone
  19. Persian126classical, c. 900-@ema05found 9, more than anyone
  20. Scots124modern form, c. 1500-@bard2thebonefound 10, more than anyone
  21. Irish119modern form, c. 1500-@dodecaliciousfound 12, more than anyone
  22. Russian117modern form, c. 1500-@bomar2300found 7, more than anyone
  23. Hindi102modern form, c. 1500-@travelgirlfound 6, more than anyone
  24. Swedish101modern form, c. 1500-@shopperfound 9, more than anyone
  25. Middle Dutch97c. 1150-1500@wickedsmartfound 9, more than anyonePATRON
  26. Portuguese96modern form, c. 1500-@rosiethehobbitfound 6, more than anyone
  27. Anglo-Norman95c. 1066-1400@carynvfound 5, more than anyone
  28. Malay88modern form, c. 1500-@barbizardfound 6, more than anyone
  29. Middle Low German67c. 1100-1600@nanabnanafound 6, more than anyone
  30. Afrikaans58modern form, c. 1500-@thirdtwinfound 4, more than anyone
  31. Chinese55modern form, c. 1500-@cmcgfound 5, more than anyonePATRON
  32. Nahuatl52modern form, c. 1500-@solarbotanistfound 4, more than anyone
  33. Welsh51modern form, c. 1500-@hauntingfound 6, more than anyone
  34. Yiddish51modern form, c. 1500-@hauntingfound 10, more than anyone
  35. Turkish48modern form, c. 1500-@thefathistorianfound 4, more than anyone
  36. Icelandic46modern form, c. 1500-@madrmofound 4, more than anyone
  37. Danish44modern form, c. 1500-@erifound 3, more than anyone
  38. Scottish Gaelic43modern form, c. 1500-@donnafound 4, more than anyone
  39. Frankish38c. 400-900@mahls242found 5, more than anyone
  40. Mandarin37modern form, c. 1500-@baronvonchopfound 5, more than anyone
  41. Norwegian37modern form, c. 1500-@lacfound 3, more than anyoneSUPPORTER
  42. Polish37modern form, c. 1500-@popsacklefound 3, more than anyone
  43. Urdu23modern form, c. 1500-@allyjsfound 2, more than anyone
  44. Hawaiian20modern form, c. 1500-@ennouisefound 2, more than anyone
  45. Cantonese18modern form, c. 1500-@chloeglovefound 2, more than anyone
  46. Proto-Slavic16c. 300-600 AD@panties2000found 3, more than anyone
  47. Quechua16modern form, c. 1500-@commoncorvidaefound 3, more than anyoneSUPPORTER
  48. Old Occitan15c. 800-1500@tifneyblairfound 2, more than anyone
  49. Swahili15modern form, c. 1500-@zoomanmorganfound 2, more than anyone
  50. Hungarian14modern form, c. 1500-@heartseedfound 3, more than anyoneSUPPORTER
  51. Korean12modern form, c. 1500-@rodzillafound 3, more than anyone
  52. Tagalog12modern form, c. 1500-@daisybellefound 2, more than anyone
  53. Finnish11modern form, c. 1500-@darnfound 2, more than anyone
  54. Aramaic9c. 900 BC-700 AD@bayathreadfound 2, more than anyoneSUPPORTER
  55. Czech7modern form, c. 1500-@llollyfound 2, more than anyone
  56. Inuktitut5modern form, c. 1500-@resurgofound 2, more than anyone
  57. Catalan2modern form, c. 1500-@littlefluvfound 1, more than anyone
  58. Romanian2modern form, c. 1500-@flaggyfound 1, more than anyone
  59. Maori0modern form, c. 1500-

The players

Everyone with twenty traced words gets an archetype — the thing their vocabulary does more of than everybody else’s. 9,340 players have one. What each one measures →

The Deep Diver26.1%

Words almost nobody else has ever found. 2,438

The Long-Hauler22.5%

You go long: ten letters or more, far more often than most players. 2,100

The Anglo-Saxon17.8%

Old, short, Germanic. English before the Normans. 1,658

The Hellenist12.3%

Greek roots, and the sciences built on them. 1,151

The Francophile11.8%

The Norman half of the language. 1,104

The Latinist7.6%

Your words come down through Rome. 713

The Suffix Hunter1.3%

You build words out of their parts, front and back. 117

The Compounder0.6%

Two roots welded together, over and over. 59

Your own version of all of this lives on your profile. Find a player →

How any of this is worked out: Word DNA in the FAQ

Building the world’s most-played word game · playoutlier.com