Here at Vocabulary.com, we believe that improving your vocabulary is a worthy goal in and of itself.

But let's face it, sometimes a little kudos along the way can help you stay motivated — that's why points and achievements have been part of the learning experience here since day one.

Today, we are proud to announce that we've "leveled-up" the way achievements work on Vocabulary.com. We're pretty excited about it, and we hope you will be too. Read on for all the details.

New Achievement and Level Badges

The 20 new level badges.

First, we've completely overhauled the design of our achievement badges and profile pages to be more colorful, higher resolution, and a whole lot more fun. We know you'll want to collect them all.

Earn Bonus Points for Every Achievement

Now, whenever you earn an achievement, you'll also get bonus points to go with it. Master a new word? That's still worth 1,000 points. But now when you earn a five-in-a-row streak, you'll rack up a 25-point bonus, too. Click on all the achievements to explore the bonuses you can earn for each one.

Achievement Milestones

We've added a new feature to achievements called milestones which reward you for earning an achievement multiple times. For example, let's say you master an "A" word for the first time — that'll earn you a 1,000-point bonus (same as always). But now, when you master your 5th "A" word, you'll earn your first milestone and get your first star on the Mastered an "A" Word achievement. Along with that star, you'll also get a milestone bonus of 2,000 points — not bad!

Click on an achievement to see details like milestone bonuses.

An achievement can have up to 3 milestones, and you'll earn a star for each one you achieve. So, if you go on to complete the final milestone, and master 100 "A" words, you'll earn a whopping 10,000-point bonus for that last star!

Every achievement that you can earn more than once has milestones (and bonuses) to reward you for your effort. Milestone bonuses range anywhere from a helpful 250-point boost for getting your 5th streak of five in a row, to the truly gargantuan 20 million-point (!) bonus for completing the final milestone of the Word Czar level.

New Daily Streak Achievements

Master a word every day and keep your streak going.

Mastering a word every day is a great personal goal to have on Vocabulary.com (as well as in life). That's why starting now, when you master your first word of the day, you'll earn a one-day daily streak achievement. Master another word tomorrow, and you'll get the two-day streak badge. Keep it up for a week straight, and earn the Complete the Week streak achievement.

Now, can you master a word every day for a week straight, 5 times? That's what it takes to earn the first milestone for Complete the Week. Pull it off and you'll be rewarded with a 25,000-point bonus. Complete 50 weeks (not necessarily in a row) and we'll happily bestow a 250,000-point bonus upon you.

Head-to-Head Matchups

See how you stack up against other players.

Sure — it's great to earn achievements — but it's also fun to see how you stack up against other players in the Vocabulary.com community. Now, when you click on someone else's profile (say in a leaderboard), you can explore all the achievements they've earned. And, if you click their achievements, you can see how you two compare. Who earned it first? Who was the fastest to reach the 3rd milestone? Who earned it most recently? We make it easy to geek out on all the stats, and truly know who's dominating the achievement showdown.

New Achievements

We've added lots of new achievements!

Back when we launched, the idea that anyone would master 1,000 words on Vocabulary.com blew our minds. But now, people out there are playing Vocabulary.com more than ever, so we needed to up our game, too. That's why we added new achievements for mastering 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, and 10,000 words. What's the bonus for mastering 10,000 words? Glad you asked. Master 10,000 words on Vocabulary.com, and not only will you be the proud owner of a great vocabulary, but you'll also walk away with a cool million-point bonus.

Finally, for all you perfectionists out there, we've added a new 100-in-a-row streak achievement. But don't worry if that 100-question streak remains an elusive white whale for you — remember, you're learning!

More Achievements, Less Interruptions

The new achievement pop-up notification.

We didn't want all these great new achievements to interrupt your learning, so we created a better way to show you when you earn an achievement. Like before, whenever you earn an achievement for the first time (or achieve a major milestone), we'll show you the achievement in a "slide" that fills the entire question panel. But now, when you earn an achievement multiple times, you'll see the achievement momentarily pop up in the upper-right hand corner, over your profile badge. This way it doesn't interrupt your play and you can move on to the next question. If you miss an achievement pop-up, click on your badge on the upper-right and you'll see that we've reformatted the "hamburger menu" so you can easily see the last few achievements you've earned. Click on the achievement icons to see all the details of your accomplishment.

Stay Tuned

Now that we have a great new framework in place for achievements, expect us to add more achievements that celebrate more of what you learn on Vocabulary.com. Got an idea for a new achievement? Let us know in the comments below!

So what are you waiting for? Start playing and keep racking up those achievements!

Play on, and enjoy!

The Vocabulary.com Team