Your Kindle vocabulary words are stuck on the device. Export them to a CSV file, import that CSV into Anki with the sentences preserved, and you have a deck ready to review. Kindle gives you the word and the sentence, but not what it means. Leafy fills that gap.
Kindle stores the words in a SQLite database file on the device. The full steps to copy that file and run a query that joins the words with their sentences are at Kindle vocabulary builder export. The one line query pulls every word next to the sentence it came from, straight into a CSV format Anki accepts. All you need is that CSV file.
The file has exactly two columns. Column one is the word you looked up, column two is the sentence from the book where you found it. No other data, no timestamps, no book titles. Just words and the lines they appeared in. That is enough to build a useful deck because context is what makes a word stick.
Open Anki and go to File, Import. Pick the CSV file you made from the Kindle database. Anki shows you options: the separator is comma (use the default), the note type can be Basic or anything with at least two fields, and you need to map the columns to your card fields.
Map field 1 (the word) to the Front and field 2 (the sentence) to the Back. If your note type has more fields you can leave them blank or skip the mapping. Check that you are allowing HTML in case your sentences have formatting, then hit Import.
Either direction works, but they test you on different things. Word on the front and sentence on the back is easier. You see the word and try to remember what it means. Sentence on the front and word on the back is harder and more useful. You test yourself on recognising the word in context, which is closer to how you actually read.
Whichever you choose, the real power is that the sentence is there. A word on its own is a list of definitions. A word inside a sentence is the meaning you actually needed.
The Kindle database records the word and the sentence but not the definition. You know where it appeared and what it was surrounded by, but not what it meant. Usually that is fine because the sentence carries the meaning. Sometimes it is not.
That is where most vocabulary decks fail. A pre-made deck from someone else has someone else's sentences. The words feel lifeless and disconnected. But your Kindle words came from your own reading, so the sentence is half the answer.
You can type the definitions in by hand, one card at a time, which is where most people stop. The other route is to bring the CSV into Leafy first. Import a word list takes the same file once you add a header row naming the two columns Word and Context. It keeps each sentence attached to its word and looks the words up for you, so the meaning is there before Anki ever sees the list. Then export from Leafy to Anki and the card arrives with the word, the sentence and the meaning already on it.
Leafy also works outside the Kindle. Any word you meet on the Mac, in a PDF, a web page or a subtitle, it saves with the sentence it came from, so the deck you started from the Kindle keeps growing from everything else you read.
Free while LeafyApp is in beta. One download, macOS 14 and up.
Also worth a look: exporting Kindle vocabulary in the first place, building an Anki deck from what you read, or looking up a word on Mac.