from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup import requests query = 'viking' r = requests.get("http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=" + query) r.content soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES) soup soup.dt.a.text soup.dd query = 'whale' r = requests.get("http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=" + query) soup = BeautifulSoup(r.content, convertEntities=BeautifulSoup.HTML_ENTITIES) soup.dd soup.dt.a.text soup.dd soup.dt soup.dd soup.dt soup.dt() soup.dd() r.content soup soup.findAll('dd', { 'class': 'hightlight' } ) soup soup.dd [ x.a for x in soup.findAll('dt', { 'class': 'highlight' } ) ] hits = [ x.a.text for x in soup.findAll('dt', { 'class': 'highlight' } ) ] etyms = [ x.text for x in soup.findAll('dd', { 'class': 'highlight' } ) ] results = zip(hits, etyms) print(results)