Title: Glossary Tooltip – Highlight Terms & Show Tooltips Author: Jumedeen khan Published: 1 June 2024 Last modified: 14 October 2026 --- Search plugins ![](https://ps.w.org/glossary-tooltip/assets/banner-772x250.png?rev=3704823) ![](https://ps.w.org/glossary-tooltip/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=3631349) # Glossary Tooltip – Highlight Terms & Show Tooltips By [Jumedeen khan](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jumedeenkhan/) [Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/glossary-tooltip.3.0.5.zip) * [Details](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/#description) * [Reviews](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/#reviews) * [Installation](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/#installation) * [Development](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/#developers) [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/) ## Description The Glossary Tooltip plugin **automatically highlights terms** within your WordPress website’s content, displays **tooltips with their definitions**, and improves ** SEO and UI** through **automatic links**. Readers understand jargon without ever leaving the article, and your content gains clean **internal links** that also help search engines understand your site’s structure. Beyond highlighting, the plugin includes a full **A–Z glossary page** (a wiki-style dictionary powered by the `[glossary-list]` shortcode) with alphabetical navigation,** live search**, categories, and flexible sorting and layout options. It is a natural fit for **blogs, documentation sites, knowledge bases, online courses, SaaS products, and any business, medical, financial, legal, or technical website** that relies on specialized terminology. Learn more: [Official Website](https://glossarytooltip.com/) · [Pricing](https://glossarytooltip.com/pricing/)· [Documentation](https://glossarytooltip.com/docs/) · [Demo](https://glossarytooltip.com/demo/)· [Video tutorials](https://www.youtube.com/@GlossaryTooltip/videos) #### ✨ Automated highlighting * **Publish once, link everywhere** — add a term and it is automatically detected and linked across every post type you select. There is no manual linking. * **Synonyms and aliases** — give any term alternate spellings, abbreviations, or acronyms. Each one is recognized, highlighted, and linked to the same term. * **Post-type control** — choose exactly which post types (posts, pages, products, custom post types) get highlighted. * **Per-post and per-term overrides** — switch highlighting or tooltips on or off for an individual post, page, or term, independent of the site-wide settings. * **Repeat control** — highlight each term once, a set number of times, every Nth occurrence, or every occurrence on a page. * **Per-page first-occurrence override** — on an individual post, choose to highlight each term only its first time, overriding the site-wide repeat rule for that page. #### 💬 Tooltips * **Responsive behavior** — definitions appear on hover on desktop and on tap on mobile, with a configurable mobile breakpoint. * **Position and placement** — place the tooltip above, below, left, or right of the term, with a fine position offset. * **Styling** — choose a built-in style (Classic, Light, Dark, Minimal, Shadow) or override any style with your own text, background, and border colors. * **Sizing** — set the tooltip font size, border width, border radius, and padding to match your design. * **Excerpt length** — control how many words of the definition appear, based on the term’s excerpt or content. * **Accessible** — tooltips work with the keyboard (focus shows them, Esc closes them) and respect reduced-motion preferences. #### 📚 A–Z glossary index * **Full index page** — display every term alphabetically via the `[glossary-list]` shortcode. * **Alphabetical navigation** — jump straight to a letter; digits and symbols group into 0–9 and special-character sections. * **Search** — a search box lets visitors filter terms as they type. * **Categories** — show terms from one or several categories in a single index. * **Nested categories** — include child categories automatically so sub-category terms appear in the index too. A category filter bar and a category-tree view are available with Premium. * **Sorting and layout** — sort by name, date, custom order, or randomly; choose ascending or descending; show or hide letter headings; cap the number of terms per letter; and arrange terms in 1–6 columns. #### 🔗 Related terms On each glossary term page, an optional “Related Terms” box lists other terms that share a category, giving visitors a natural way to keep exploring. #### 🗨️ Comments & feeds * **Comments on terms** — let visitors comment on glossary term pages. * **Disable glossary terms feed** — turn off the RSS feed for glossary term pages( both the feed URL and its link). * **Comments feed toggle** — independently disable just the comments feed of a term, separate from the comments section. #### 🎯 Parsing control * **Exclusions** — skip headings, skip text already inside links, and exclude specific HTML tags from parsing. * **Section exclusions** — wrap any part of a post with `[glossary-exclude]...[/ glossary-exclude]` to leave it untouched, or place a single marker to skip everything after it. * **Selective highlighting** — with `[glossary_parse]`, highlight just the block of content you choose. * **Term blacklist** — never highlight terms from selected categories (a global“ never highlight” list in the settings), handy for keeping automatic linking off certain parts of your glossary. * **Accent-aware matching** — terms with accented or non-ASCII characters are matched correctly, with optional case-sensitive matching. #### ⚡ Performance * **Content caching** — store parsed output so repeat views are served without re-parsing. * **Smart skipping** — content with no matching terms is left untouched, so empty pages parse almost instantly. * **Asset delivery** — load scripts in the footer and inline assets to reduce render- blocking requests. * **Main-query control** — optionally limit parsing to the main article on a page. #### 🧩 Compatibility * **Themes** — works with any standards-compliant theme (Twenty Twenty-Five, GeneratePress, Astra, Kadence, Blocksy, and more). * **Page builders** — Elementor, Divi, Bricks, Genesis, Avada/Fusion, Beaver Builder, WPBakery, Oxygen, and Enfold/Avia. * **Table plugins** — coordinates with NinjaTables and avoids interfering with heading scraping in Fixed TOC and Easy Table of Contents. * **SEO** — avoids double-highlighting content that Yoast SEO re-processes internally. * **Multilingual** — works with WPML and Polylang, including translatable admin strings and a bundled `wpml-config.xml`. * **AMP** — on AMP pages, terms render as plain links with no JavaScript. #### 💾 Settings backup and migration Export all plugin settings as a JSON file, import them on another site, or reset everything to defaults from the Advanced tab. Glossary terms are a standard WordPress content type, so they move between sites with the built-in Tools Export and Tools Import screens. #### ⌨️ Shortcodes ``` [glossary-list] displays the full A–Z glossary index. ``` * `category` — show terms from one or more category slugs, comma-separated. Defaults to `all`. * `orderby` — `name`, `date`, `menu_order`, or `rand`. Defaults to `name`. * `order` — `ASC` or `DESC`. Controls both sort direction and the direction of the letter groups. Defaults to `ASC`. * `letters` — `show` or `hide` the letter headings. Defaults to `show`. * `limit` — max terms per letter group, or `-1` for no limit. Defaults to `-1`. * `columns` — arrange terms in 1 to 6 columns. Defaults to `2`. * `include_children` — `yes` or `no` for including child categories. * `category_filter` — `yes` or `no` to show a category filter bar (Premium). * `category_tree` — `yes` or `no` to group the index by category (Premium). Example: `[glossary-list category="wordpress" orderby="date" order="DESC" columns ="3"]` ``` [glossary_parse] — highlight the content you wrap, e.g. `[glossary_parse]This sentence gets highlighted.[/glossary_parse]`. [glossary-exclude] — turn highlighting off for a section: `[glossary-exclude]...[/glossary-exclude]` for a block, or a single `[glossary-exclude]` marker to skip the rest of the post. The older underscore forms (`[glossary_list]`, `[glossary_exclude]`) still work. [glossary_footnote] — add a numbered footnote on any text: `[glossary_footnote]A quick note.[/glossary_footnote]` (Premium). ``` #### 👑 Glossary Tooltip Premium Take your glossary to the next level with [Glossary Tooltip Premium](https://glossarytooltip.com/)— a companion plugin that unlocks powerful features right inside the same **Glossary Settings** screen. Turn a simple word list into a rich, search-friendly knowledge center your visitors can explore and search with ease. Standout Premium features: * **Modern tooltip styles** — Modern, Material, Gradient, and Card designs with entrance animations, plus per-term placement and style. * **AI-generated definitions** — generate a term’s definition with ChatGPT or Google Gemini right from the term editor. * **Featured images** — show a term’s image inside its tooltip and in the glossary index. * **Advanced live search** — instant index filtering, including synonyms, abbreviations, and definitions. * **Google Translate** — translate tooltips and definitions with the free Google Translate widget or server-side via the Google Cloud API. * **URL tracking** — append a tracking query string (e.g. `utm_content=service`) to every term link for campaign and Analytics tracking. * **Exclude areas** — stop auto-linking inside any element carrying a CSS class you choose. * **Tags & related terms** — a Tags taxonomy and related-term links by tag. * **Category tree & filters** — filter the index by category and present it as a category tree. * **Footnotes & external links** — numbered footnotes (including a `[glossary_footnote]` shortcode for notes on any text) and custom external term links with icon, new- tab, and nofollow options. * **Advanced per-post overrides** — Smart Term Control with per-term placement, style, and repeat settings. * **Whitelist & blacklist support** — choose exactly which terms and categories are highlighted on each post. * **Import & export terms data** — move terms, settings, and media between sites. * **Multilingual & multisite support** — runs on multilingual (WPML/Polylang) sites and adds network glossary tools. Upgrade whenever you’re ready — every Premium feature appears right inside your settings and activates the moment you connect your license. See our official website [glossarytooltip.com](https://glossarytooltip.com/) for plans and pricing. ## Screenshots [⌊Modern, intuitive interface for managing Glossary Tooltip.⌉⌊Modern, intuitive interface for managing Glossary Tooltip.⌉[ Modern, intuitive interface for managing Glossary Tooltip. [⌊Organized settings with clear, easy-to-navigate sections.⌉⌊Organized settings with clear, easy-to-navigate sections.⌉[ Organized settings with clear, easy-to-navigate sections. [⌊Configure the glossary index with A–Z navigation and live search.⌉⌊Configure the glossary index with A–Z navigation and live search.⌉[ Configure the glossary index with A–Z navigation and live search. [⌊Manage glossary term highlighting, links, excerpts, and display options.⌉⌊Manage glossary term highlighting, links, excerpts, and display options.⌉[ Manage glossary term highlighting, links, excerpts, and display options. [⌊Customize tooltip appearance, position, colors, mobile behavior, and display options.⌉⌊ Customize tooltip appearance, position, colors, mobile behavior, and display options .⌉[ Customize tooltip appearance, position, colors, mobile behavior, and display options. [⌊Preview the glossary index with A–Z navigation and live search.⌉⌊Preview the glossary index with A–Z navigation and live search.⌉[ Preview the glossary index with A–Z navigation and live search. [⌊Automatically highlighted glossary terms with definition tooltips.⌉⌊Automatically highlighted glossary terms with definition tooltips.⌉[ Automatically highlighted glossary terms with definition tooltips. [⌊Quickly browse glossary terms by letter, numbers, and special characters.⌉⌊Quickly browse glossary terms by letter, numbers, and special characters.⌉[ Quickly browse glossary terms by letter, numbers, and special characters. [⌊Find glossary terms instantly with built-in live search.⌉⌊Find glossary terms instantly with built-in live search.⌉[ Find glossary terms instantly with built-in live search. [⌊Create and edit glossary terms with descriptions, excerpts, featured images, and custom settings.⌉⌊Create and edit glossary terms with descriptions, excerpts, featured images, and custom settings.⌉[ Create and edit glossary terms with descriptions, excerpts, featured images, and custom settings. [⌊Override highlighting and tooltip settings for individual posts, pages, and custom post types.⌉⌊Override highlighting and tooltip settings for individual posts, pages, and custom post types.⌉[ Override highlighting and tooltip settings for individual posts, pages, and custom post types. [⌊Manage all glossary terms from the dedicated Glossary Terms dashboard.⌉⌊Manage all glossary terms from the dedicated Glossary Terms dashboard.⌉[ Manage all glossary terms from the dedicated Glossary Terms dashboard. ## Blocks This plugin provides 4 blocks. * Glossary Search Bar A search form for glossary terms. * Glossary Index Display an alphabetical glossary index with optional category filtering and layout controls. * Glossary Latest Terms Displays the most recently added glossary terms. * Glossary Categories Displays a list of glossary categories. ## Installation #### Automatic installation 1. In your WordPress admin, go to **Plugins Add New Plugin**. 2. Search for **Glossary Tooltip**. 3. Click **Install Now**, then **Activate**. #### Manual installation 1. Download the plugin ZIP file. 2. Go to **Plugins Add New Plugin Upload Plugin**. 3. Choose the ZIP and click **Install Now**, then activate it. #### After activation 1. Go to **Glossary Add New Glossary Term**. 2. Enter the term as the title and its definition in the editor, then publish. 3. Visit any post or page containing that word — it is now highlighted with a tooltip. 4. To show the full index, add `[glossary-list]` to a page or choose a glossary index page under **Glossary Settings**. ## FAQ ### Do I have to link glossary terms manually? No. Terms are detected and linked automatically once you publish them. ### How do I show a full list of terms? Add the `[glossary-list]` shortcode to any page, or select a glossary index page under Glossary Settings. ### Can I disable highlighting for a single post or page? Yes. Every post, page, and supported post type has its own Highlight and Tooltip options, each set to Default, On, or Off. ### How do I skip one paragraph? Wrap it with `[glossary-exclude]...[/glossary-exclude]`. For a whole post, set its Highlight option to Off. ### Can a term have alternate names? Yes. Add synonyms or abbreviations and each one will be highlighted and link to the same term. ### Will highlighting break my headings or links? No. The plugin skips headings and existing links by default; both behaviors are optional in the settings. ### How often is a term highlighted? You can highlight each term once, a set number of times, every Nth occurrence, or every occurrence. ### Can I change the tooltip position and look? Yes. Position, offset, size, padding, border, radius, style, and colors are all under Glossary Settings Tooltip. ### I changed the glossary slug and now get 404s. How do I fix it? Go to Glossary Settings Advanced Flush Rewrite Rules, or Settings Permalinks Save Changes. ### How do I move settings or terms to another site? Export or import settings as JSON from the Advanced tab. Terms move with Tools Export and Tools Import. ### Does it work with my theme and page builder? It works with any standard theme and includes compatibility for Elementor, Divi, Bricks, Genesis, Avada/Fusion, Beaver Builder, WPBakery, Oxygen, Enfold, and NinjaTables, plus Yoast SEO, Fixed TOC / Easy Table of Contents, WPML, and Polylang. ### Does it slow down my site? No. It caches parsed content, loads scripts in the footer, inlines assets, and skips content with no matching terms. ## Reviews ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/841b1e304b79fda29ae8c9a847c689c8f74957236b946acb69b13e9a3e38fe38? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Great Plugin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/great-plugin-41831/)󠁿 [islamkhan1154](https://profiles.wordpress.org/islamkhan1154/) 11 October 2026 1 reply Great plugin! It is easy to use and adds useful glossary tooltips to WordPress posts. Works well for improving the user experience. Thank you for creating this plugin! ![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/666c46808b9cb870bbd7c1330f6d989aa10e6de3b74420bf8d5f40b89913986b? s=60&d=retro&r=g) ### 󠀁[Very satisfied and easy to use plugin](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/very-satisfied-and-easy-to-use-plugin/)󠁿 [jamshedkhan](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jamshedkhan/) 1 June 2024 2 replies I am currently using CM Tooltip Glossary but it has a lot of extra features which make me confused. I was always looking for a plugin that has the required features for tooltip glossary and I found this. It's very simple and comes with only the essential features, also, it is very easy to setup. Thanks for offering this. [ Read all 2 reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/) ## Contributors and Developers “Glossary Tooltip – Highlight Terms & Show Tooltips” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin. Contributors * [ Jumedeen khan ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jumedeenkhan/) * [ Mozedia ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mozedia/) “Glossary Tooltip – Highlight Terms & Show Tooltips” has been translated into 1 locale. Thank you to [the translators](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/glossary-tooltip/contributors) for their contributions. [Translate “Glossary Tooltip – Highlight Terms & Show Tooltips” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/glossary-tooltip) ### Interested in development? [Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/glossary-tooltip/), check out the [SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/glossary-tooltip/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/glossary-tooltip/) by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/glossary-tooltip/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss). ## Change Log #### 3.0.5 * Added the `[glossary_tooltip]` shortcode to show a tooltip on any text without needing a glossary term. * Premium: improved uninstall cleanup when the free plugin is inactive. * Premium: added the `[glossary_footnote]` shortcode and per-post control of the footnotes box. * Premium: added URL tracking to term links and exclude areas (CSS classes). * Premium: added Google Gemini as an AI provider and Google Translate (free widget or API). * Fixed tooltip definitions cut mid-tag by the word limit, which could leave HTML markup unbalanced. * Improved premium plugin detection for accurate feature toggling. * Fixed unsafe tooltip HTML and URL handling. * Fixed large-glossary matching with 100-term batches and the gtt_parse_array_chunk_size filter. * Fixed HTML entity matching and source-site tooltip lookups. * Fixed tooltip position, style and animation settings never saving without Premium. * Fixed per-term tooltip theme overrides being ignored on the frontend. #### 3.0.2 * Added AI-generated term definitions in Premium (Business and higher). * Added plan-aware upgrade labels in Premium — see which plan unlocks each feature. * Added a Performance & Asset Loading section and category exclusions in Premium. * Added index styling controls in Premium. * Symbol-only terms now group under a single # letter on the A–Z index. * Fixed the color picker so the Save and Discard bar appears as soon as a color is picked. * Fixed gradient tooltip arrow background alignment. #### 3.0.1 * Fixed a PHP “undefined array key” warning for the tooltip animation. * Fixed large glossaries silently cut off from highlighting terms. * Fixed uninstall leaving saved widget data behind. #### 3.0.0 * Added featured images, tags, footnotes, external term links, and advanced per- term controls. * Added glossary term data import/export and improved multilingual and multisite support. * Premium settings are now preserved across license changes without reconfiguration. * Improved tooltip placement, styles, and animations for consistent Free and Premium behavior. * Added improved settings, editor, and Premium account interfaces. * Improved compatibility, code quality, and WordPress Plugin Check compliance. #### 2.8.0 * Added AMP support — terms render as plain links on AMP pages with no JavaScript. * Added a Related Terms box on term pages. * Added nested category support: include child categories automatically, plus category filter and category-tree options when Premium is active. * Added tooltip sizing controls (font size, border width, radius, padding, position offset). * Added glossary page styling for index letters and items (size, color, hover, background, radius). * Added the `[glossary_parse]` shortcode for selective highlighting. * Improved compatibility with Enfold/Avia, NinjaTables, Bricks, Divi, Genesis, and blog/archive excerpts. * Added selectable tooltip styles with custom color overrides. * Added a per-page “highlight first occurrence only” override for repeating terms. * Added a category blacklist so terms from chosen categories are never highlighted. * Added comments on glossary term pages, plus options to disable the glossary terms feed and the terms comments feed. * Multiple bug fixes and performance improvements. #### 2.7.0 * Added highlighting for Bricks, Divi, and Genesis. * Fixed repeated-highlighting controls and the index item font size limit. #### 2.6.0 * Fixed highlighting issues with images, nested code, links, attributes, accented terms, and special characters. * Fixed blank posts using [glossary_exclude], cache refreshes, and tooltips on blog and archive pages. * Improved tooltip keyboard and reduced-motion support. #### 2.5.0 * Compatibility and code quality improvements. #### 2.4.8 * Improved compatibility with Elementor, Avada, Divi, Beaver Builder, WPBakery, and Oxygen. * Fixed accented and non-ASCII term highlighting. #### 2.4.0 * Added tooltip position settings, maintenance tools, system info, and import/export. #### 2.2.0 * Redesigned the settings screen and added advanced parsing, performance, and asset- loading options. #### 2.1.1 * Added synonyms, aliases, and per-term visibility controls, plus tooltip accessibility improvements. #### 2.0.0 * Added advanced settings, tooltip customization, and glossary index improvements. ## Meta * Version **3.0.5** * Last updated **3 days ago** * Active installations **100+** * WordPress version ** 6.0 or higher ** * Tested up to **7.1.3** * PHP version ** 7.4 or higher ** * Languages * [English (US)](https://wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/) and [Korean](https://ko.wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/). * [Translate into your language](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/glossary-tooltip) * Tags * [dictionary](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/dictionary/)[glossary](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/glossary/) [lexicon](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/lexicon/)[tooltip](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/tooltip/) [vocabulary](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/tags/vocabulary/) * [Advanced View](https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/glossary-tooltip/advanced/) ## Ratings 5 out of 5 stars. * [ 2 5-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/?filter=5) * [ 0 4-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/?filter=4) * [ 0 3-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/?filter=3) * [ 0 2-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/?filter=2) * [ 0 1-star reviews ](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/?filter=1) [Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/#new-post) [See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/reviews/) ## Contributors * [ Jumedeen khan ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/jumedeenkhan/) * [ Mozedia ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/mozedia/) ## Support Got something to say? Need help? [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/glossary-tooltip/) ## Donate Would you like to support the advancement of this plugin? [ Donate to this plugin ](https://buymeacoffee.com/jumedeenkhan)