Sources

Data	Used for	Licence	Version we use
ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon), file `enable1.txt`	Which words exist (all tools)	Public domain, released by its authors “to the Scrabble community, as an alternate to official word lists”	172,823 lines; SHA-256 `3f16130220645692…`
SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) by Kevin Atkinson	How common a word is	Permissive licence; full notice	2020.12.07; English, American and British word lists
CMU Pronouncing Dictionary	Rhymes and syllable counts	BSD-style licence; LICENSE	117,493 single words
LDNOOBW list of offensive words	Starting point for our manual review of offensive words (not shipped). Published by Shutterstock	CC BY 4.0	English list

The data is downloaded from pinned versions and processed by a script; the numbers on every page are calculated from the result at build time, last on 9 November 2026.

What is in the list

Ordinary English words and their inflected forms: plurals, verb forms, comparatives (CAT, CATS; RUN, RAN, RUNNING).
Words of 2 to 28 letters, written in lowercase a–z.
Many rare and technical words that word games accept. 3,014 of our words do not appear in SCOWL at all, even at its largest size.

What is not in the list

Proper nouns (names of people and places), abbreviations, hyphenated words and words with apostrophes or accents.
Single letters and many newer words. ENABLE is a fixed list, so words such as QI, ZA and OK are missing even though some newer official game lists accept them.
153 offensive words, explained in the next section.

Offensive words we hide

We hide ethnic and other slurs against groups of people, strong profanity and explicit sexual slang, together with their inflected forms. We do not hide medical or anatomical terms, or words whose everyday meaning is neutral – COCK (rooster), TIT (a bird), ASS (donkey), BASTARD, QUEER (odd) or RETARD (to slow down) stay in. We started from the LDNOOBW list and reviewed every match by hand, because using that list as-is would remove ordinary words such as ESCORT and INTERCOURSE.

Hidden words never appear in results, and the word checker reports them as not found. This means a valid game word is occasionally missing from our results – we accept that trade-off for a site anyone can use.

How “common” is decided

SCOWL sorts English words into size levels, from size 10 (the most frequent words) to 95 (very rare). We label a word common if it appears at size 50 or below. That is a dictionary-size level, not a promise that most people know the word – technical terms can be in it too – the size SCOWL’s README calls “medium” (35 is “small”, 70 “large”). 61,942 of our 172,670 words are common.

Word length	Words	Common	SCOWL size 10
2 letters	96	54	27
3 letters	968	575	158
4 letters	3,885	2,284	458
5 letters	8,609	4,423	601
6 letters	15,211	7,041	647
7 letters	23,084	9,604	680
8 letters	28,398	10,180	572

SCOWL size levels used: 10, 20, 35, 40, 50, 55, 60, 70, 80, 95. A word gets the smallest size at which it first appears in the English, American or British lists.

Pronunciations

Rhymes and syllable counts use the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which describes American English. A perfect rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end. Rhyme results are limited to words in ENABLE or SCOWL up to size 70; any word in the dictionary can be looked up. Words the dictionary does not contain get a spelling-based syllable estimate, clearly marked.

How the tools work

The word list is split into files by word length (and pronunciations by first letters). Your browser downloads only the parts a search needs and runs the search in a background worker, so typing stays smooth on a phone. What you type stays in your browser and is not sent to our server or to our analytics. The address in your browser does not change while you type; only the “Copy link” button creates a link with your input after the #, a part of the address that browsers never send to servers.

The search logic is covered by automated tests – for example that one E cannot make TREE, that a blank tile covers exactly one letter, and that guessing SPEED against ABIDE colours the first E yellow and the second gray.

Licence notices

The components carry different licences: the list of words itself is public domain (ENABLE); the commonness levels are derived from SCOWL, whose permission notice must accompany copies; rhyme and syllable data are derived from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary under its BSD-style licence. The full notices of the exact versions we use are published with the data: ENABLE notice, SCOWL 2020.12.07 Copyright file (complete, including UKACD, VarCon and other notices), CMU Pronouncing Dictionary LICENSE.

ENABLE

The ENABLE master word list, WORD.LST, is herewith formally released into the Public Domain. Anyone is free to use it or distribute it in any manner they see fit. […] Please mention the source and credit us as originators of the list.

ENABLE was maintained by M\Cooper, with Alan Beale as a major contributor, as credited in the SCOWL copyright notes.

SCOWL

Copyright 2000-2018 by Kevin Atkinson. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell these word lists, the associated scripts, the output created from the scripts, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

SCOWL includes further public-domain and permissive sources with their own notices (UKACD, VarCon, Ispell and others); all of them are in the complete Copyright file of version 2020.12.07.

CMU Pronouncing Dictionary

Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. The contents of this file are deemed to be source code. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY NOR ITS EMPLOYEES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

LDNOOBW

“List of Dirty, Naughty, Obscene, and Otherwise Bad Words” by Shutterstock and contributors, licensed under CC BY 4.0. We used it as a reference for review; it is not distributed with the site.

Trademarks

Lexiowl is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the makers of any word game. Game names mentioned on this site belong to their owners and are used only to describe what our tools can help with.

Found a mistake or a word that should not be here? Write to info@lexiowl.com.