Gloss is a vocabulary app built around one idea: a word you learn should still be there a month later.

Open it and you get a handful of new words for the day. Each one arrives with its pronunciation, its part of speech, and a real sentence it lives in, with the translation underneath. Tap to hear it. Mark it when you know it. Five minutes and you are done.

Then the schedule takes over. A word you learn today is back tomorrow to check it stuck. Get it right and it waits three days, then a week, then three weeks, then two months. Get it wrong and it comes back sooner. You can see all of this on every word: which box it has reached and when it is next due. There is no black box.

Reviews change shape as a word matures. First you pick the meaning. Later you fill the gap in a sentence, or hear the word and choose what it means. Miss one and the whole entry opens so you can read it properly. A word that keeps slipping is named on your progress page, not quietly retired.

The words themselves are the part we are proudest of. Definitions come from Wiktionary and sentences from Tatoeba, both written by people and both credited in the app. Nothing on a card was generated. Each language is ordered by how often its words actually appear in everyday speech, so you meet the ones you will hear first.

Eight languages so far: English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese, around 59,000 words between them. Korean and Hindi are next, and every deck grows as the source material does.

Tell Gloss whether you are starting from nothing or already know some, and it starts at the right depth. Harder words open up as your rank rises. The whole deck is kept on your phone after the first download, so it works on the train, on a plane, or anywhere the signal drops.

There are no ads, no energy meter, no hearts and nothing counting down. It does not use third-party analytics. You do not have to sign in, and if you never do, the only things that leave your phone are your settings and four totals: words learned, reviews answered, your streak, and the last day you used it. Subscribe and your progress is kept safe, so a new phone picks up where the old one left off. Everything can be deleted from inside the app.

Free, for as long as you like: five new words a day in one language, with reviews, pronunciation, your streak, a daily reminder and a home-screen widget.

Premium lifts the daily limit and opens every language, with topic filters, a searchable word list, saved words, sync between devices, eight colour schemes, and two rest days per streak so one missed day does not undo a month. £2.99 a month or £19.99 a year, after a seven-day free trial. Cancel any time in Google Play.

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