Wordnik's architecture is built around a large English word graph database and uses microservices and ephemeral Amazon EC2 storage. Key aspects include:
1) The system is built as independent microservices that communicate via REST APIs documented using Swagger specifications.
2) Databases for each microservice are kept small by design to facilitate operations like backups, replication, and index rebuilding.
3) Services are deployed across multiple Availability Zones and regions on ephemeral Amazon EC2 storage for high availability despite individual host failures.