5 letter words starting with K

Every five-letter word in the list that begins with K — 205 of them, printed in full below. Filter by the letters you have confirmed or ruled out to cut it down.

Five-letter words beginning with K, by the numbers

There are 205 of them here, which makes K the fifteenth busiest opening letter at this length. The full list is on this page rather than behind a click, in alphabetical order, with the highest-scoring words called out separately below.

The most common second letter is A, which follows K in 41 of them. 88 of them end in S, mostly plurals and third-person verbs.

On standard Scrabble tiles the most expensive are KUDZU (19), KYLIX (19), KAZOO (18). Tile values are a fact about the game rather than about English: a word scores well because its letters are rare, which is exactly why the top of that list is nobody's idea of a good opening guess.

What K does at the front of a word

K opens far fewer words than its frequency inside words suggests, and much of what it does open is Germanic or borrowed whole — including the silent KN- pair in knee, knife and know.

114 of them use five different letters (KADIS, KAFIR, KAGUS and KAIFS). 34 of them contain a doubled letter (KAPPA, KAROO, KAZOO and KEEFS). The no-repeat words are the ones worth guessing early, because each one tests five letters instead of four.

Nine of them carry three or more vowels (KAIAK, KAROO, KAURI and KAZOO). Those are the ones to reach for when the letters you have left are mostly vowels. Every one of them contains at least one of A, E, I, O or U, so there is no vowel-free K word at this length to fall back on.

Working through a K word in a puzzle

With 205 candidates, the useful move is elimination rather than inspiration. Put the letters you have confirmed into the pattern box in their positions — K____ is already assumed on this page — and put everything you have ruled out into the excluded box. What survives is usually a list you can read in one look.

A first letter is worth less than it feels. Knowing a word starts with K removes most of the dictionary but leaves these 205; knowing the third letter typically cuts harder, because middle positions vary more than opening ones. If you have a choice about which position to test next, test the middle.

Alphabetically the list here runs from KABAB to KYTHE. 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. If one you expect is missing it is missing from the list itself, which is a curated subset of ENABLE and says so plainly rather than quietly.

Highest scoring K words at five letters

Standard Scrabble tile values. A word scores well when its letters are rare, which is why the top of this table and the top of a puzzle-strategy list have almost nothing in common.

How five-letter K words end

The last letter, counted across all 205 of them. This is the fastest filter to apply when a crossing letter has given you the ending.

Common questions

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.

• 3 969
• 4 3,888
• 5 8,621
• 6 5,776
• 7 6,729
• 8 6,714
• 9 5,919

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

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