How it works
This fancy wording translator swaps everyday words for formal ones: buy becomes purchase, help becomes assist, enough becomes sufficient. A second row, Grand, goes further for a joke. It swaps words and leaves grammar alone, so read the result before you send it.
Read the full guide
Formal first, Grand below
The large card is Formal: 216 swaps into words you could put in a letter, from commence to sufficient. Grand lays 77 ornate ones on top, so hello becomes salutations and a cat becomes a feline. Only whole words and phrases with an entry change. Everything else stays as typed.
What it cannot do
It has no grammar. Help me find it comes out as assist me locate it, which no one would write. A word with two meanings gets one swap, so a bus stop becomes a bus cease. Treat the result as a draft.
- Past forms are rows of their own: bought becomes purchased, and found out becomes ascertained.
- Some words change only in the right spot: your help becomes your assistance, while help me becomes assist me.
- Swap reads fancy English back into plain words, roughly: each row returns its first plain word.
Questions and answers
Is this for fancy fonts or fancy words?
Words. It changes which words a sentence uses and leaves the letters alone. For fancy lettering, the font generator sets one line in many Unicode alphabets.
Where do the fancy words come from?
They are ordinary English. Every output word was checked against its Wiktionary entry, to confirm that one of its senses matches the plain word. Where Wiktionary labels that sense formal or dated, the list says so.
Will it make my writing sound smarter?
Not by itself. Long words in a broken sentence read worse than plain ones. It helps you find a more formal word, and Grand is there for a laugh. It promises nothing about essays, exams or applications.
Why did some of my words not change?
Only words and phrases in the table change, 293 rows in all, and the note under the result counts the rest. Plain words are often the right ones, so most of the dictionary is left alone on purpose.