English words aren't created equal. Some carry the meaning of our world 🌍, while others are the invisible bolts and screws 🔩 that hold sentences together. Dive in to explore the two great families of speech.
Lexical Words
of the dictionary
Function Words
total words exist
Understanding the fundamental differences in how these words function, evolve, and carry meaning.
Nouns, Verbs (Lexical), Adjectives, Adverbs
Pronouns, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Determiners
Comparison of functional characteristics. Note: "Frequency" refers to how often they appear in text (Closed words are few, but used constantly).
Total Dictionary Volume
Open words dominate the dictionary, but Closed words dominate the sentence.
What happens if you remove one class? See how meaning vs. structure collapses.
Select a mode above to analyze the sentence structure.
The "Caveman Effect." You retain the core meaning (cat, sat, mat), but you lose tense, specificity, and relationship. It sounds like a telegram or a toddler speaking.
Total collapse. You are left with a skeleton of "the", "on", "was". Grammatically correct fragments with absolutely zero content about the world.
Explore the specific parts of speech belonging to each class.
People, places, things, and ideas.
Actions or states of being.
Describe nouns.
Modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
Replace nouns to avoid repetition.
Show relationships in time, space, or logic.
Connect words, phrases, or clauses.
Introduce nouns and specify quantity or possession.
Why are they called "Open" and "Closed"? Because one door is locked, and the other is wide open.
New technology needs new names. We didn't have words like "Selfie," "Blog," or "Unfriend" 20 years ago.
It's incredibly rare to invent a new preposition or pronoun. "The" has been "The" for centuries.
Try to invent a word!
Easy: Invent a noun for a "device that scratches your back automatically."
→ "The Scratch-o-matic" (Accepted instantly!)
Impossible: Invent a new word for "under."
→ "Glorp." (Try saying "The cat is glorp the table." No one will accept it.)