Wiktionary API

Overview

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request

GET https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=parse&page=hello&prop=sections&format=json

Result

HTTP 200 · application/json · 4,011 bytes · compressed

Response time

494 ms (median of 3) · fastest 469 ms

Transport

TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 · certificate issued by Let's Encrypt

Browser CORS

No Access-Control-Allow-Origin header — call it from a server, not the browser

Served by

mw-api-ext.eqiad.main-7c8544589d-9ljk2

Recorded

2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=parse&page=hello&prop=sections&format=json on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

{
  "warnings": {
    "main": {
      "*": "Subscribe to the mediawiki-api-announce mailing list at <https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/mediawiki-api-announce.lists.wikimedia.org/> for notice …"
    },
    "parse": {
      "*": "\"prop=sections\" has been deprecated. Please use \"prop=tocdata\" instead."
    }
  },
  "parse": {
    "title": "hello",
    "pageid": 4803,
    "sections": [
      {
        "…": "(9 more fields)"
      }
    ],
    "showtoc": ""
  }
}

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

const url = "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

import requests

url = "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/"
headers = {}

response = requests.get(url, headers=headers, timeout=30)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()
print(data)

curl "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php?action=parse&page=hello&prop=sections&format=json"

What Can You Build?

// Get word definition
const word = 'serendipity';
const response = await fetch(`https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php`);
const data = await response.json();
const entry = Array.isArray(data) ? data[0] : data;
console.log(`${word}: ${entry.definition || entry.meanings?.[0]?.definitions?.[0]?.definition}`);

// Fetch word details for vocabulary study
const words = ['eloquent', 'ephemeral', 'ubiquitous'];
for (const word of words) {
  const response = await fetch(`https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php`);
  const data = await response.json();
  console.log(`
📖 ${word}`);
  console.log('Definition:', data.definition || data.meanings?.[0]?.definitions?.[0]?.definition || 'N/A');
}

// Get a random word definition for word-of-the-day
const response = await fetch(`https://en.wiktionary.org/w/api.php`);
const data = await response.json();
const word = data.word || data.entry || 'Word';
console.log('Word of the Day:', word);
document.getElementById('word').textContent = word;
document.getElementById('definition').textContent = 
  data.definition || data.meanings?.[0]?.definitions?.[0]?.definition || '';

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.