Universal Etymology Popup on Word Click

WHAT IT DOES This userscript helps you explore the fascinating history behind words by displaying etymology popups whenever you click or double-click on a highlighted word. It scans the page for over a dozen words with known etymological roots—including "science", "history", "philosophy", "democracy", "economy", "politics", "music", "astronomy", "biology", "geography", "psychology", "love", and "king"—and for each, the popup shows its language of origin (e.g., Latin, Greek, Old English), original root word and its meaning, original meaning in its source language, how the meaning has changed over time, cognates in other languages, and related English words. It also indicates the broader language family (e.g., Romance, Hellenic, Germanic) to provide deeper historical context. WHERE IT RUNS The script works on every website you visit—news articles, blogs, academic papers, social media, or any webpage with text. It runs entirely within your browser, reading only the visible text content of the current page. It does not track your browsing history, access other tabs, or send any data externally. All etymology data is stored locally within the script. HOW TO USE After installation, open the panel by clicking the tool's icon in the BotGentz sidebar. Choose your trigger method—click or double-click—and your preferred highlight style: underline, border, or background. Toggle "Common words only" to highlight only longer words (4+ letters) to reduce visual clutter. Toggle "Show cognates" to display related words in other languages. The script automatically scans pages on load (you can toggle this off). Click or double-click any highlighted word to see its etymology popup. Click anywhere else or press Escape to dismiss the popup. Use "Scan page for words" to manually re-scan after dynamic content loads, or "Clear word wrappers" to remove all highlights and return the page to its original state. THE TECHNICAL MECHANISM This script uses a curated etymology database with entries containing nine fields: origin language, root word, root meaning, original meaning, meaning change description, language family, cognates list, and related words list. The script builds a regular expression from all database keys, sorted by length descending to ensure multi-syllable words are matched correctly. Word boundaries prevent false matches (e.g., "history" won't match inside "historical"). A TreeWalker traverses the DOM to find text nodes containing matching words, then replaces each occurrence with a styled element that preserves the original text while adding interactive event listeners for click or double-click. When triggered, the popup is constructed dynamically from the database entry and positioned using getBoundingClientRect with automatic viewport adjustment—if the popup would appear off-screen, it flips above or below the trigger and shifts horizontally to remain fully visible. The script also includes a "common words only" filter that excludes short words to reduce visual clutter on dense pages. THE PANEL The panel is draggable anywhere on the screen and remembers its position between sessions. It can be collapsed to a small floating bubble to minimize distraction, and expanded again with a single click. The panel's width can be adjusted, and pressing the Escape key closes it instantly. All settings—trigger method, highlight style, common words filter, show cognates, and auto-scan—are persisted locally using GM_setValue, so your preferences remain intact across page reloads and browser restarts. PLEASE NOTE This userscript requires the free BotGentz extension to function. The etymology database covers a selection of common English words with well-documented histories but is not exhaustive—many words with interesting etymologies may not be included. The meaning change descriptions are summarized and may not capture all nuances of semantic evolution. The cognates and related words are representative examples, not complete lists. The script's matching relies on whole-word boundaries; it will not catch word stems or inflected forms (e.g., "scientific" for "science"). No data from your browsing is stored or transmitted anywhere—all processing occurs entirely in your browser.