Dictionary Word Definitions Scraper

Dictionary Word Definitions Scraper

Scrape word definitions, synonyms, and pronunciations from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, up to a million entries per run. Each word comes with its part of speech, phonetic spelling, audio URL, origin, and example sentences. No API key or parsing logic required. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Building a vocabulary app or a language dataset means you need clean, structured dictionary entries without writing a new parser for every source. This Actor reads the public pages of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com directly, tokenizes your word list or a pasted paragraph, and returns each match in one fixed schema. It handles rate limiting and retries so you get complete results.

Who uses it	What they scrape Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com for
Language app developers	Populate a vocabulary builder with definitions, audio, and example sentences.
Content writers	Extract the exact meaning and synonyms of every significant word in a draft article.
NLP engineers	Build a custom lexicon with part-of-speech tags and phonetic transcriptions.
ESL teachers	Generate word lists with pronunciations and usage examples for lesson plans.

What it does

This Actor collects word definitions, synonyms, pronunciations, and etymologies from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, and returns each entry as a flat row.

• 📋 Word list input: paste one word per line, or a semicolon-separated list, and the Actor looks up each one.
• 📄 Paragraph tokenizer: paste a block of text and the Actor extracts every unique word, then fetches its dictionary entry.
• 🔊 Pronunciation data: each result includes a phonetic spelling and a direct audio URL where available.
• 📖 Full entry depth: part of speech, definition, synonyms, origin, and example sentences in one row.

Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.

What you can do with Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com data

📚 Build a vocabulary study set.

An ESL teacher pastes a news article, collects definitions and audio for every unique word, and imports the CSV into a flashcard app.

✍️ Audit word choice in a manuscript.

A content writer runs their draft through the paragraph input, reviews the synonyms column, and replaces overused words before publishing.

🧠 Train a custom NLP lexicon.

An NLP engineer feeds a domain-specific word list, collects part-of-speech tags and definitions, and uses the structured output to augment a tokenizer.

🔊 Generate pronunciation guides.

A language app developer scrapes a vocabulary list, extracts the phonetic spelling and audio URL for each entry, and embeds the media in their app.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API key	Reads public pages directly, no registration or rate-limit negotiation.
Tokenization built in	Drop a paragraph and get back only the dictionary entries for its unique words.
Fixed flat schema	Every word returns the same columns, ready for a database or spreadsheet.
Audio support	Phonetic spelling and a playable audio URL come with each entry.

How it compares

This Actor focuses on standard dictionary and thesaurus entries from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, while the competitors below target slang or a single dictionary source.

Feature	ParseForge	Urbandictionary Scraper	Oxford English Dictionary	Urban Dictionary
Standard dictionary definitions	Yes, from Dictionary.com	Not listed	Yes	Not listed
Thesaurus synonyms	Yes, from Thesaurus.com	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed
Audio pronunciation URL	Yes	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed
Paragraph tokenization input	Yes	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed
Etymology and word origin	Yes	Not listed	Not listed	Not listed

Configure the run

Drive the Actor from a word list, a paragraph, or both together, and set a maximum number of entries to cap the run. The Input tab lists every parameter.

A first run with the defaults:

{
  "maxItems": 10,
  "words": "hello\nlanguage\nserendipity\netymology\nalgorithm"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "words": "hello\nlanguage\nserendipity\netymology\nalgorithm"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.016 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$1.60
1,000 results	$16.00
10,000 results	$160.00

New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.

Free users

Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.

Run it

1. Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
2. Open the Dictionary Word Definitions Scraper.
3. Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
4. Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.

Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Give an AI agent live access to Dictionary.com & Thesaurus.com through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:

$claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/dictionary-api-scraper"

Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results?

Check that your word list or paragraph contains common dictionary words. Slang, proper nouns, or misspellings may not return an entry. Try a simple word like 'hello' to verify the Actor is working.

The run stopped before all my words were processed.

You likely hit the maximum entries limit. Increase the 'Maximum entries' value in the input and rerun.

Some words are missing audio URLs.

Not every word on Dictionary.com has an audio pronunciation. The phonetic spelling field will still be populated when available.

The paragraph input is returning too many words.

The Actor extracts every unique word from your text. To narrow the results, use the word list input instead and provide only the terms you need.

I see duplicate words in my dataset.

The Actor deduplicates words from your input before scraping. If you see duplicates, check that your input file does not contain the same word with different capitalization or punctuation.

FAQ

Question	Answer
Which dictionary sources does this Actor use?	It reads the public pages of Dictionary.com for definitions, pronunciations, and etymologies, and Thesaurus.com for synonyms.
Can I scrape a whole paragraph instead of a word list?	Yes. Paste any text into the paragraph input field, and the Actor will split it into unique words and look up each one.
Does it return audio pronunciations?	Yes. When Dictionary.com provides an audio file, the Actor returns the direct URL and a phonetic spelling.
What output formats are supported?	You can export your dataset as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify dataset tab.
Is there a limit on how many words I can scrape?	You set the maximum entries per run, up to 1,000,000. The Actor stops when it reaches that number or exhausts your input list.
Do I need an API key for Dictionary.com?	No. The Actor reads the public web pages directly, so no registration or API key is required.
How does the Actor handle words that are not found?	Words that return no dictionary entry are skipped, and only successful lookups appear in your dataset.
Can I mix a word list and a paragraph in one run?	Yes. Provide both inputs and the Actor will combine the unique words from each source before looking them up.
Does it respect rate limits?	The Actor includes built-in delays and retries to avoid overwhelming the source and to ensure complete data collection.

Related actors

Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.

🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.

⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Dictionary.com, LLC. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.