75 FUN WITH WORDS WEBSITES

Abbreviations and Acronyms of the U.S. Government
The name says it all.
http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/subjectareas/gov/docs_abbrev.html
Acronym Database
A searchable database of acronyms and abbreviations and their expansions.
http://www.ucc.ie/info/net/acronyms/index.html
Acronym Finder
A database of acronyms and their meanings. Contains acronyms about: general topics, computers, technology, government, telecommunications, and the military including Department of Defense, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard acronyms.
http://www.AcronymFinder.com/
Action Verbs
A list of verbs to help you brag about your accomplishments on a resume.You can choose to view the list alphabetically or by skill categories.
http://www.earlham.edu/~career/resume/verbs.html
Alan Cooper's Homonym List
Words, like "caret" and "carrot" that are pronounced the same, but are spelled differently, and that have different meanings. This list was compiled with a true appreciation for "the prime numbers of the English language."
http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym_list.html
Alta Vista Babel Fish Translation
You provide either plain text or the address (URL) of a Web page to translate from English into a variety of languages or vice versa. For real fun, try translating something into a second language and then back again into the original language.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn
Amanda's Mnemonics Page
A mnemonic is a device, such as a formula or rhyme, used as an aid in remembering. Amanda collects them and has organized them into handy categories. To spell arithmetic correctly remember "A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream."
http://www.frii.com/~geomanda/mnemonics.html
Amerispeak
Expressions of our American ancestors. This page is a collection of phrases that have been passed down through the generations in contributor's families. Contribute your own or read through the categories. The site also features "Ye Olde English Sayings."
http://www.rootsweb.com/~genepool/amerispeak.htm
Ambigram.Com
Ambigrams are a word or words that can be read in more than one way or from more than a single vantage point, such as both right side up and upside down.
http://Ambigram.Com/
The Anagram Genius Server
Did you know that rearranging the letters of "George Bush" gives "He bugs Gore," Madonna Louise Ciccone" gives "Occasional nude income" and "William Shakespeare," "I am a weakish speller"??! With The Anagram Genius you can find out what lurks within the letters of YOUR name, or that of your boss, employer or anything else that you choose." You supply the name or phrase, tone, gender, context, use (or not) of vulgar words, and number of requested responses. Submit this information with your email address and your anagrams arrive promptly in your inbox. Awesome!
http://www.anagramgenius.com/server.html
Anagram Hall of Fame
Here you'll find a list of the best and the brightest anagrams of all time, such as "The Morse Code = Here Come Dots," "Slot Machines = Cash Lost in'em" and "Dormitory = Dirty Room."
http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/hof.html
Antagonyms
An antagonym (a term the author coined) is single word that has meanings that contradict each other. For example: Cleave, which means to adhere tightly and also to cut apart. Antagonyms are also known as "contronyms."
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/antagonym.html
Apostrophe Protection Society
Homepage of the Apostrophe Protection Society, started in 2001 by John Richards, with the specific aim of preserving the correct use of this currently much abused punctuation mark in all forms of text written in the English language.
http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/
Archive of Engandered, Special or Fun Words
Readers submit words they describe as either Endangered (at risk of falling eternally out of use), Special (quite unique, either in meaning or in composition), or Fun (a delight to the senses), or some combination thereof. If a word is worthy of being described as Endangered, Special and Fun, then it gets the status of the ever elusive and highly coveted E.S.o.F. Hat Trick.
http://www.13d.org/esofword/
BABEL: A Glossary of Computer Related Abbreviations and Acronyms
This glossary was compiled because the author became frustrated while reading magazine articles, help wanted ads and equipment for sale brochures....all pertaining to computers....where the listed Abbreviations and Acronyms were used and their meanings were either not known or were not immediately available.
http://www.geocities.com/ikind_babel/babel/babel.html
Banished
The list of words and phrases chosen annually by Lake Superior State University as banished from the Queen's English for mis-use, over-use or general uselessness. Lists from previous years are available in their archive to view or to print as a poster.
http://www.lssu.edu/banished/
Barrel Full of Words
"Here is a collection of over 2,000 English words and phrases in humorous context—a veritable dictionary—including goofinitions, mock antonyms, collective nouns, hyp-hens, bundel words and much more. This is a must-visit site for comedians, speech writers, punsters, toastmasters, English teachers, and all students of language."
http://www.jimwegryn.com/Words/Words.htm
Behind the Name: The Etymology and History of First Names
This site looks into the meaning and history of common first names.
http://www.behindthename.com/
Bilingual Vocabulary Quizzes
Interactives quizzes to help you learn and review vocabulary in a variety of foreign languages.
http://www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/v/
The Book of Cliches: Phrases to Say in Times of Trouble
Cliches for those troubled moments, neatly arranged by category. Includes cliches for: when life is hard, when you are afraid, when you think you are ugly, when you are looking for something and you don't know for what and many more.
http://utopia.knoware.nl/users/sybev/cliche/cliche.htm
Brain Food: Puzzles For the Brain To Gnaw On
Give your mind a work out with devious collection of puzzles. There are hundreds, ranging from word games to logic problems to riddles. Some are tricky. Some require innovation. All require thinking power. Good luck.
http://www.rinkworks.com/brainfood/
Brendan's Amazing Anagram Generator
This amazing program will take an English name, phrase, and so on, and rearrange the letters to form other English words. Submitting "word play" yielded 48 anagrams, including "yap world," "pal rowdy," and "wary plod."
http://mmm.mbhs.edu/~bconnell/anagrams.html
Brendan's Phone Anagram Generator
This program finds the letter equivalents of a phone number. For example, "439-2665" is equivalent to dialing "HEY-COOL." Most of the results you generate will probably be meaningless, but there might be a couple or so that are real or semi-real phrases.
http://mmm.mbhs.edu/~bconnell/phoneagrams.html
Broken Rules Page
Here you will find some background on the "never end a sentence with a preposition" rule as well as lists of words that violate the "i before e" rule.
http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/broken.rules.html
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest Home Page
Where "WWW" means Wretched Writers Welcome. Sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University since 1982, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Burma Shave Slogans of the Fifties
This site features a little history and a lot of the slogans that appeared bit-by-bit along the highway advertising Burma Shave with rhymes.
http://www.fiftiesweb.com/burma1.htm
Canadian Aptonym Centre
A collection of real people whose names strongly suggest their occupation or pastime, e.g. the hairdresser Sonia Shears and hockey coach Jim Playfair.
http://homepage.mac.com/chapmandave/aptonyms/
Candy is Dandy But Liquor Is Quicker: Ogden Nash Online
I've loved Odgen Nash's poetry since I was a child. This site boasts it is the largest and most popular online collection of poetry by Ogden Nash. And it's searchable.
http://www.westegg.com/nash/
Canonical Abbreviations/Acronyms List
Some of these will have you ROFLASTC (Rolling On the Floor Laughing And Scaring The Cat).
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall/abbrev.html
Chiasmus.com
Chiasmus is when you reverse the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases. Like Mae West's famous line, "It's not the men in my life, it's the life in my men.
http://www.chiasmus.com/
Christine Lavin Home Page
Not only does Christine know how to have fun with words, she's funny, clever, hip and sings like an angel. (And she twirls a mean baton!)
http://www.christinelavin.com/
Cliche Finder
Have you been searching for just the right cliche; to use? Are you searching for a cliche using the word "cat" or "day" but haven't been able to come up with one? Enter any words in the textbox and the search engine will return any clichés which use that phrase. Over 3,300 cliches indexed!
http://www.westegg.com/cliche/
A Collection of Word Oddities and Trivia
A collection of word facts which includes such oddities as "BEIJING has three dotted letters in a row (in lower case)," and "OCEANIA crams five syllables into only seven letters."
http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words.html
The Collective Noun Homepage
This page as much fun as an exaltation of larks and an ostentation of peacocks.
http://www.ojohaven.com/collectives/
The College Slang Page
They've got the 411 on the hip talk in the hallowed halls. Check it out!
http://www.intranet.csupomona.edu/~jasanders/slang/
Common Errors in English
Huge A to Z listing of common errors as well as a collection of links to related resources.
http://www.wsu.edu/%7Ebrians/errors/errors.html
Complex Statements for the Simple-Minded
A collection of statements that make you ask the musical question "huh?" My favorite: "There are only three kinds of people; people who can count and people who can't."
http://home.earthlink.net/~getwild/jokes/misuses.html
Country Western Song Generator
Like the name says, this site generates country western songs. When I went there the song included the lyrics: "I met her in Sheboygan at McDonald's; I can still recall that creepy smile she wore; She was weighted down with Twinkies when she shot me, and I knew no guy would ever love her more..." It doesn't get much better than that!
http://www.outofservice.com/country/
Crazy English
Richard Lederer's wonderful essay in which he reminds us, "Let’s face it: English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple..."
http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/crazy.html
Crazy Libs
Read brief original stories or excerpts from classic literature with your words strategically inserted to produce whacky results.
http://www.rinkworks.com/crazylibs/
Create Your Own Shakespearean Insults
Combine one word from each of three columns, preface with "Thou­ and thus shalt thou have the perfect insult. Let thyself go -- mix and match to find a barb worthy of the Bard.
ftp://ftp.cirr.com/pub/SCRIBE/Stage/Toinsult.Txt
Crossword Solver (Sorta)
Select the length of the answer you're looking for, supply the letters you do know, click on the "What is it?" button, and get your answer.
http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/crossword.html
Crypto Cracker
Crypto Cracker is a tool for cracking word ciphers, also known as cryptograms or cryptoquotes, a puzzle where one letter in the puzzle is substituted with another. Will also encrypt a phrase.
http://www.wordplays.com/crypto.html
Daily Word Search
Every day a new interactive word search puzzle with an interesting theme. Choose from 5 different versions that range from easy to difficult
http://www.dailywordsearch.com/
The Darmok Dictionary
Remember the "Darmok" episode from the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation? Of course you do. It's the one in which the Enterprise encounters an alien race, the Children of Tama, whose language has so far eluded human comprehension. Here's a site, complete with sound bites, devoted to understanding the language.
http://www.chaparraltree.com/sflang/darmok.shtmll
Demented Lyrics
An archive of lyrics to wacky songs by such artists as "Weird Al" Yankovic, Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, and Stan Freberg. There are even a few Monty Python songs at this site. You can look for a song by artist and by title.
http://mypage.iu.edu/~jbmorris/
Dialect Translator
Translate English text into your choice of a variety of dialects including Brooklyn, Fudd, Pirate, Drawl and Valspeak. Translate a web page or enter your own text. [Click on the link and choose "Word Jumble" from the menu.]
http://www.wordplays.com/
The Dialectizer
Translate whole web pages or passages of text into the following comic dialects: Redneck, Jive, Cockney, Elmer Fudd, Swedish Chef, Moron, or Pig Latin.
http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/
The Dictionary of Mountain Bike Slang
This dictionary had its origins in a message posted to the rec.bicycles.off-road newsgroup that said, in part: "Offroading needs more lore. More culture. More vernacular. [...] Let us use the 'net for something really valuable -- let's compile a list of bikey slang. Biff, face plant, gravity check, endo; those are pretty good terms, but let's get some of the really clever ones." This is the result.
http://world.std.com/~jimf/biking/slang.html
Do-It-Yourself Country and Western Song
Fill in the blanks using number-coded word lists and you'll be singing in no time!
http://webpages.marshall.edu/~hartwel1/humor/misc/do_it_yourself_cw.html
eLibs
Just like the Madlibs you did as a kid. Read the eLibs that others have come up with or supply your own nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. to create wacky stories.
http://www.elibs.com/
The Enchefenizer
Translate text you type into the box into Mock Swedish (as spoken by the Muppet's Swedish Chef). Choose "Chef's Language" from the menu on the left.
http://home.earthlink.net/~emttrashtalk/
English Is Tough Stuff
"Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, these verses were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself. "
http://www.unique.cc/ron/estuff.htm
English Signs from Around the World
Actual signs in English seen 'round the world. A sampling: "Belgrade Hotel Elevator: Please leave your values at the front desk." and "Athens Hotel: Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 a.m. daily."
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nagorski/engsigns.htm
The Enigma Device
A word game where you swap letter pairs in scrambled well-known or humorous quotations until the original message is restored. Great fun!
http://wordzap.com/enigma/
English to Pig Latin Translator
Enter the text you wish translated in the box and click the translate button. It'sway asway easyway asway atthay!
http://www.snowcrest.net/donnelly/piglatin.html
Eponyms
An eponym is a word derived from someone's name. For example, bloomers are named after Amelia Bloomer. This site presents the author's personal collection of eponyms, collected from books, webpages, teacher worksheets, and brainstorming on his own or with literate friends.
http://members.tripod.com/~foxdreamer/index.html
Etymologic
Calling itself the "toughest word game on the web," in this game you're presented with 10 randomly selected word origin or word definition puzzles to solve.
http://www.etymologic.com/
An Evening (Wasted) with Tom Lehrer -- Lyrics
If you enjoy such ditties as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," The Element Song," and "Oedipus Rex" (as I do!), you'll be thrilled to find the lyrics to this album (remember vinyl?) and to other Lehrer masterpieces at this site.
http://mypage.iu.edu/~jbmorris/LYRICS/lehrer.wasted
Expressions & Sayings
Discover the meanings and origins of popular sayings.
http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/sayindex.htm
Fake Out! The Definition Guessing Game
Choose a level and a word and see if you can guess its definition.
http://www.hmco.com/hmco/school/dictionary/
Free Online Word Search Puzzles
A large collection of printable word search puzzles arranged in a variety of categories. Most contain a hidden message formed by the letters remaining when the word search is solved. For instance, in the Music category there's a Beatles puzzle. After you find the song titles that have been hidden in the grid, what's left is the first lines of one of the Beatles songs.
http://www.free-online-word-search-puzzles.com/
FreeTranslation.com
Free automatic computer translation in 8 language directions. Translate FROM English to French, German, Spanish, Italian, Norweigian, and Portuguese and translate TO English from French, German, Portuguese and Spanish.
http://www.freetranslation.com/
German Words in English
List of German words that have found their way into the English language.
http://www.daube.ch/opinions/sprache06.html
Get Lyrical
Here's a site to help you identify that bit of a song that you just can't get out of your head. If you only know the chorus or one lyric from a particular track you can search here and get a list of possible song titles and artist matches.
http://www.getlyrical.com/index.html
Google Borkified
Search the web as the Muppet's Swedish chef.
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/
Goonerisms Spalore (Spoonerisms Galore)
He's been proudly "meducating the asses since 1997." Check out this page dedicated to the listing of assorted, random & fun spoonerisms.
http://www.matthewgoldman.com/spoon/
Grandiloquent
This dictionary is the result of an ongoing project to collect and distribute the most obscure and rare words in the English language. It also contains a few words which do not have equivalent words in English
http://www.islandnet.com/~egbird/dict/dict.htm
Greek and Latin Roots
Vocabulary help is here! This site helps you decode Greek and Latin bases, prefixes and suffixes.
http://www.kent.k12.wa.us/KSD/MA/resources/greek_and_latin_roots/transition.html
Haiku Writer: Computer Generated Haiku
Computer-generated poetry. Click reload to see a new collection.
http://www.familygames.com/features/humor/haiku.html
The Heteronym Homepage
Heteronyms are words that are spelled identically but have different meanings when pronounced differently. For example: Lead, pronounced LEED, means to guide. However, lead, pronounced LED, means a metallic element.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/heteronym.html
Homographs
Homographs are words that have identical spellings but different pronunciations and different meanings.
http://www.marlodge.supanet.com/wordlist/homogrph.html
Horsename-O-Matic
Create magnificent names for all kinds of horses - equestrian, trotting, galloping by just pushing the button.
http://www.etdomenenavnkanmaksimaltinneholdesekstitrebokstaversliksomdette.com/indexenglish.html
How To Write Your Name in Mayan Glyphs
This page will lead you on a guided tour in steps to show you how you can put together your own name glyph, and finishes with an example.
http://www.halfmoon.org/names.html
I'd Like To Have a "Word" With You!
An attractive page in which the author shares with us a few of her favorite obscure words including: Hapax Legomenon, Logomachy and Clavus.
http://www.psnw.com/~grammaj/words.html
Instant Online Crossword Puzzle Maker
Customize a puzzle to meet your needs. You supply the words, the clues and a title. Great fun!
http://www.varietygames.com/CW/ 

Source: http://www.wolinskyweb.net