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NLetterWords

5 letter words starting with M

Every five-letter word in the list that begins with M — 443 of them, printed in full below. Filter by the letters you have confirmed or ruled out to cut it down.

Up to 15 letters. Use ? or * for a blank tile.

443 words

5-letter words 443

Select a word for its tile score and letters.

Nothing you type leaves your browser — the word list and the solver are on this page. Check this before you rely on it. This word finder is provided free and without warranty, and its results are not professional advice.

Five-letter words beginning with M, by the numbers

There are 443 of them here, which makes M the eighth 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 M in 125 of them. 152 of them end in S, mostly plurals and third-person verbs.

On standard Scrabble tiles the most expensive are MUZZY (28), MEZZO (25), MUJIK (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 M does at the front of a word

M is the most reliably vowel-following opener in English. A five-letter M word almost always has its vowel in position two, which makes M pages unusually easy to scan.

297 of them use five different letters (MABES, MACED, MACER and MACES). 69 of them contain a doubled letter (MAARS, MAILL, MALLS and MAMMA). The no-repeat words are the ones worth guessing early, because each one tests five letters instead of four.

31 of them carry three or more vowels (MAFIA, MAHOE, MAILE and MAIZE). Those are the ones to reach for when the letters you have left are mostly vowels. Three of them manage without A, E, I, O or U (MYRRH, MYTHS and MYTHY).

Working through an M word in a puzzle

With 443 candidates, the useful move is elimination rather than inspiration. Put the letters you have confirmed into the pattern box in their positions — M____ 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 M removes most of the dictionary but leaves these 443; 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 MAARS to MYTHY. 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 M 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.

WordPoints
MUZZY28
MEZZO25
MUJIK18
MAZED17
MAIZE16
MAQUI16
MATZA16
MATZO16
MAXIM16
MAZER16

How five-letter M words end

The last letter, counted across all 443 of them. This is the fastest filter to apply when a crossing letter has given you the ending.

Ends inWordsExamples
S152MAARS, MABES, MACES
Y62MADLY, MALMY, MALTY
E45MACHE, MACLE, MADRE
D30MACED, MANED, MATED
A29MAFIA, MAGMA, MAMBA
R28MACER, MAJOR, MAKAR
O18MACHO, MACRO, MAMBO
H16MARCH, MARSH, MATCH

Common questions

How many 5 letter words start with M?

443 in the list used here, which is every five-letter M word in the public-domain ENABLE dictionary apart from a short blocklist of slurs. Sites using a different dictionary will quote a different number.

Which 5 letter word starting with M scores highest?

MUZZY, at 28 points on standard Scrabble tiles, ahead of MEZZO at 25. Words With Friends values several letters differently, so the order there is not the same.

Are there 5 letter words starting with M with no repeated letters?

297 of the 443, including MABES, MACED, MACER, MACES and MACHE. These are the ones that make a good opening guess, because every letter tested is a different letter.

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.

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