5 letter words containing W
Every five-letter word in the list that contains W — 673 of them, printed below. The contains box is already set to W; add a pattern or the letters you have ruled out to cut it down.
Five-letter words that contain W, counted
There are 673 of them here, which makes W the twenty-first most common letter inside a five-letter word in this list. That is a different ranking from W as an opener: a letter can be rare at the front and common in the middle.
295 of them start with W; the other 378 have it later. The square it occupies most often is the first (295 of them). Four use W more than once (WAWLS, WHEWS, WIDOW and WOWED).
On standard Scrabble tiles the most expensive are WHIZZ (29), WOOZY (20), JOWLY (18). A high score here still means rare letters, not a good first guess — and a yellow W in a puzzle is a placement problem, not a "start with W" problem.
What a yellow W actually tells you
W anywhere is AW-, EW-, OW- and the SW- / TW- clusters. It is doing vowel work in the first set and consonant work in the second. A yellow W with no A, E or O left is almost always a cluster at the front.
506 of them use five different letters (ADOWN, AGLOW, ASKEW and AVOWS). 67 of them contain a doubled letter (ALLOW, ARROW, DWEEB and DWELL). The no-repeat words are the ones that test five letters for the price of one.
18 of them carry three or more vowels (AWAIT, AWAKE, AWARE and AWOKE). Those are the ones to reach for when the letters you have left are mostly vowels. Four of them manage without A, E, I, O or U (CRWTH, WRYLY, WYNDS and WYNNS).
Using a contains-W list in a puzzle
A yellow tile is not a green tile. These 673 candidates have W somewhere; they do not have it locked. Put the squares you have already ruled out into the pattern as dots you then exclude by hand, or type the other confirmed letters into their positions and leave W free.
The opening-W list is a different page — only 295 five-letter words start with W. The second-letter list is different again: 97 have W locked in square two. This URL is the one that matches "contains W" / "with a W in them".
Alphabetically the list here runs from ADOWN to ZOWIE. Every word on it comes from the same public-domain list the search box queries, so nothing printed here is a word the tool will then refuse to find.
Highest scoring five-letter words that contain W
Standard Scrabble tile values for words that have W somewhere, not only those that open with it. Rare letters still dominate the top of the table.
| Word | Points |
|---|---|
WHIZZ | 29 |
WOOZY | 20 |
JOWLY | 18 |
HOWFF | 17 |
OXBOW | 17 |
PAWKY | 17 |
SQUAW | 17 |
WACKY | 17 |
WALTZ | 17 |
WHACK | 17 |
Which square W occupies
How often W sits in each of the five positions, counted across all 673 words. A letter that is common in the middle and rare at the end is a placement clue, not just a count.
| Position | Words | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 295 | WACKE, WACKO, WACKS |
| 2 | 97 | AWAIT, AWAKE, AWARD |
| 3 | 156 | ALWAY, BAWDS, BAWDY |
| 4 | 89 | ADOWN, AVOWS, BLAWN |
| 5 | 40 | AGLOW, ALLOW, ARROW |
Common questions
How many 5 letter words contain W?
673 in the list used here, which is every five-letter word in the public-domain ENABLE dictionary that includes W, apart from a short blocklist of slurs. Sites using a different dictionary will quote a different number.
Which 5 letter word containing W scores highest?
WHIZZ, at 29 points on standard Scrabble tiles, ahead of WOOZY at 20. Words With Friends values several letters differently, so the order there is not the same.
Do most 5 letter words containing W start with it?
No. 295 of the 673 open with W; 378 have it in another square. That is why a yellow W is a different page from "starts with W".
Every word, grouped by how long it is
The complete list at each length. Three letters is a page you memorise; nine is a page you search.
Five-letter words by opening letter
The complete list for each letter, with how many there are. S is a page you scroll; X is a page you read.
- A 497
- B 589
- C 662
- D 455
- E 192
- F 429
- G 414
- H 334
- I 118
- J 133
- K 205
- L 401
- M 443
- N 200
- O 181
- P 565
- Q 53
- R 419
- S 1,053
- T 547
- U 117
- V 161
- W 295
- X 13
- Y 94
- Z 51
Five-letter words by second letter
The same length, a different known square. A is the large page; J is the short one.
- A 1,478
- B 53
- C 122
- D 58
- E 1,063
- F 14
- G 49
- H 377
- I 963
- J 7
- K 55
- L 508
- M 116
- N 239
- O 1,333
- P 150
- Q 12
- R 645
- S 65
- T 166
- U 789
- V 39
- W 97
- X 44
- Y 164
- Z 15
Five-letter words by a letter they contain
A yellow tile, not a green one. E is in most of them; Q and J are the short pages.
- A 3,493
- B 967
- C 1,367
- D 1,566
- E 3,878
- F 689
- G 1,003
- H 1,145
- I 2,423
- J 170
- K 879
- L 2,166
- M 1,220
- N 1,846
- O 2,529
- P 1,275
- Q 75
- R 2,669
- S 3,988
- T 2,082
- U 1,593
- V 455
- W 673
- X 202
- Y 1,321
- Z 211