Understand any word in a few seconds. Gloss explains it the way a good friend would: plain, or in the style you choose, with a sentence, the origin, and the classic definition when you want it.
That smell when rain lands on dry ground. Hot pavement, the first few drops, dust in the air.
After the storm came the petrichor.
A word of the day, chosen for you. Petrichor, sonder, liminal: words you have met in books and never quite caught, picked for your level and what you read. It is on your home screen when you wake, and arrives as a notification at the first time you choose, with more glosses until the last, if you want them. One a day; in a year, 365 words that are yours.
Looking a word up is easy. Keeping it is the work. So the morning word comes with three quick questions, and four short games bring it back on the day you would have lost it: Recall, Speed match, Fill the blank and Which style, timed by spaced repetition. A minute a day, and the words stay.
Paste a clause from a lease or the fine print on a prescription, or send it from Mail or Safari, and read it in plain English. Select a word on any web page and share it to Gloss: the card opens over the page, so you never leave the article.
A line from Thoreau or Shakespeare, with the word you might not know lit up. Tap it for the meaning, then read the line again and see what you missed.
Yes. Type a word and you get what it means. The difference is how it tells you: in plain words, in the style you pick, with a sentence that shows the word in use, where the word comes from, a few synonyms, and the classic dictionary definition when you want it.
They are written by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, following a style guide we wrote, and checked against that guide before you see them. If one still reads wrong, tap Something off? under the card: wrong meanings get fixed in the next update.
Mostly. Today’s word, its questions, your streak and your saved words live on your phone. Looking up a new word needs a connection.
The words are English, and the menus come in English and Spanish.
The first three days are free. After that it is a membership, yearly or monthly, or you pay once and keep it. The App Store shows the price in your currency. There is no free version with ads, because there are no ads.
They give you the definition. Gloss gives you the explanation, in your style, and then makes sure you keep the word. We wrote up the differences app by app, including what each of them does better, under Compared, and the best dictionary apps for iPhone says who should pick which.
Not yet. Gloss is made for iPhone first. iPad, Mac and Android come later.
The word or the text you paste goes to our server and to Anthropic to write the explanation. A word or a short paste is kept with its explanation for the next person who asks, and a word is counted for the word list; a long paste is not kept. It is never used to train a model, and nothing in it is tied to your name. The details are in the privacy policy.