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Paste a Spanish passage to see how common its words are and explore unfamiliar vocabulary with English meanings. Free, no account needed.
En octubre de 1943 el hombre que había prometido volver no volvió. La ciudad estaba llena de soldados y la gente ya no salía de casa. Había un silencio extraño, como si todos esperaran algo que nunca llegaría.
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Roughly how many Spanish words do you know?
Choose an approximate vocabulary size to highlight words you may not know yet. This is a frequency-based estimate, not a test of each word you know. Your choice is not saved, and you can change it any time.
Words ranked by frequency
Rarest first, with each word’s rank on the Spanish frequency list. Choose a vocabulary size above to see words you may not know yet.
- llegaríawould arrive6,941
- octubreOctober4,158
- salíawas leaving4,075
- prometidopromised2,871
- soldadossoldiers1,378
- llenafull1,334
- volvióreturned1,204
- silenciosilence881
- extrañostrange, stranger640
- ciudadcity335
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Clues from English
Some words resemble English, some look familiar but mean something different, and others offer fewer clues.
Similar words, different meanings
They look like an English word and mean something else.
Words you may recognise from English
These resemble English words with related meanings. Check the meanings below to see whether your guess fits the passage.
octubre October·prometido promised·soldados soldiers·silencio silence·no no/not
Rare words with fewer English clues
These uncommon words may be harder to guess from English alone.
- llegaría would arrive
- salía was leaving
What the Spanish sample shows
In the sample, volver (“to return”) and volvió (“returned”) are ranked as separate written forms. Silencio resembles English “silence”, while salía means “was going out” here: words can be familiar for different reasons, beyond their frequency.
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Browse the most common Spanish words to explore everyday vocabulary, or find reading ideas in our Spanish book catalogue. Paste a passage from a text you have to check its vocabulary here.
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The estimate uses the frequency of Spanish word forms to find the vocabulary size needed to cover nine in ten words matched to our list. Words outside the list are reported separately and excluded from that estimate.
This is a vocabulary check, not a grammar checker or a CEFR assessment. It does not measure sentence complexity or guarantee that you will understand the passage.
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