Etymonline Word Etymology Scraper

Etymonline Word Etymology Scraper

Scrape word etymologies from Etymonline by keyword search or direct word lookup, up to a million entries per run. Every entry returns the word, its full etymology text, and the source URL. No API key needed. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.

Etymonline is the web's most cited free etymology dictionary, but it has no public API. This Actor reads the public pages directly, searching by keyword or fetching a list of specific words, and returns each etymology in one consistent row. You can pull a single word's history or build a dataset of thousands of related terms without writing a single scraper.

Who uses it	What they scrape Etymonline for
Linguists and lexicographers	Building a corpus of word origins for a specific language family or time period.
Content writers and editors	Fact-checking the history of a term before publishing an article.
Language learners and teachers	Compiling vocabulary lists with etymological notes to aid memorization.
NLP engineers and data scientists	Creating a training dataset of words paired with their origin stories.

What it does

This Actor collects word etymologies from Etymonline by keyword search or direct word lookup and returns each one as a flat row with the word, its full etymology text, and the source URL.

• 🔎 Keyword search: enter a term like 'hello' and get a ranked list of related words with their etymologies.
• 📋 Direct word lookup: paste a list of words, one per line, and fetch each etymology exactly, no search ranking applied.

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

What you can do with Etymonline data

📚 Build a personal etymology dictionary.

A language enthusiast searches for 'Greek roots' and scrapes the top 500 results to create a private reference file.

✍️ Fact-check word histories for a publication.

An editor looks up a list of 50 contested terms and exports their etymologies to share with the author before the final draft.

🤖 Train an NLP model on etymological data.

A data scientist runs a keyword search for 'Latin' and collects 10,000 word-origin pairs to fine-tune a language model.

🎓 Prepare a linguistics class handout.

A professor looks up 30 words from Old English and exports the dataset to CSV for a lecture on language change.

Why choose this scraper

	What you get
No API registration	Reads public pages directly; no OAuth, no app setup, no rate-limit headaches.
Two input modes	Search broadly by keyword or fetch a precise list of words you already know.
Fixed output schema	Every row has the same columns: word, etymology text, and source URL.
Runs at scale	Collect up to a million entries in a single run, limited only by your maxItems setting.

How it compares

No other Store actor targets Etymonline the same way, so the honest comparison is with the alternatives teams actually weigh.

	Etymonline Word Etymology Scraper	Build it in-house	By hand
Setup	Run it now, zero config	Days of engineering	None, but hours per pull
When Etymonline changes	Maintained for you	You fix it	You re-learn the page
Proxies, retries, anti-bot	Built in	Your problem	Browser only
Output	Fixed JSON schema, CSV/Excel export	Whatever you build	Copy-paste
Cost	Pay per result	Engineering time	Analyst hours

Configure the run

Drive the Actor with a single search term or a list of specific words, 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,
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "hello",
  "words": "hello\nworld\nlanguage\netymology\ndictionary"
}

A larger pull:

{
  "maxItems": 200,
  "mode": "search",
  "query": "hello",
  "words": "hello\nworld\nlanguage\netymology\ndictionary"
}

Pricing

Pay-per-result: $0.01733 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.

Results collected	Approximate cost
100 results	$1.73
1,000 results	$17.33
10,000 results	$173.30

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 Etymonline Word Etymology 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 Etymonline 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/etymonline-scraper"

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

Troubleshooting

Why am I getting no results for my search term?

Etymonline may not have an entry that matches your keyword. Try a simpler or more common word, or switch to lookup mode and fetch a known word directly to verify the Actor is working.

The Actor returns fewer entries than my maxItems setting.

The Actor stops when it has exhausted the available results. A search term may only return a limited number of matches on Etymonline. Try a broader keyword or use lookup mode with a longer word list.

Some words in my lookup list are missing from the output.

If a word is misspelled or does not have its own entry on Etymonline, the Actor skips it. Check the spelling and verify the word exists on the website manually.

The etymology text looks truncated or incomplete.

The Actor captures the full text block from the page. If the entry itself is short, that is all the data available. Open the source URL in the output to confirm.

FAQ

Question	Answer
What is Etymonline?	Etymonline is a free online etymology dictionary that traces the origin and history of English words. It is widely used by writers, scholars, and language learners.
Does this Actor require an API key or login?	No. It reads the public web pages of Etymonline directly, so you do not need to register an app or obtain an API key.
What is the difference between search mode and lookup mode?	Search mode takes a single keyword and returns a ranked list of related words from Etymonline's search results. Lookup mode takes a list of specific words and fetches each one's etymology page directly, in the exact order you provide.
How many entries can I scrape in one run?	You can set the maximum entries up to 1,000,000 per run. The Actor stops when it reaches that number or runs out of matching results.
What data does each result contain?	Each row contains the word, its full etymology text as displayed on Etymonline, and the URL of the page it was scraped from.
Can I scrape non-English words?	Etymonline focuses on English words, but many entries trace origins back to Latin, Greek, French, and other languages. You can search for those root terms as well.
What output formats are supported?	You can export your dataset to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML from the Apify platform.
Is web scraping Etymonline legal?	This Actor accesses publicly available pages. You are responsible for complying with the website's terms of service and any applicable laws in your jurisdiction.
How do I run this Actor on a schedule?	You can set up a recurring task in Apify to run the Actor daily, weekly, or on any custom interval to track new or updated etymologies.

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 Etymonline. 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.