Words Containing Letters

How to find words containing certain letters

1. Type your letters. Enter one to four letters, such as x, qu, ph or ough.
2. Open the list. You'll see every word in our dictionary with those letters inside it. A group of letters must appear side by side, in the order you typed them.
3. Narrow it down. Use the length tabs, add a start or an end in the filter bar, or sort A to Z and Z to A.
4. Keep what you need. Common words are listed first and marked with a small dot. Tap a word to copy it, or copy or download the whole list.

Letters together or letters anywhere?

These lists keep a group of letters together: words containing ph finds phone and graph, but not hop or perhaps, where the P and H are apart. If your letters can be in any order or spread across the word, use words with letters. For exactly two letters anywhere in a word, there are lists like words with Q and Z.

Interesting letter groups to explore

• qu – the classic pair. In English, Q nearly always travels with U, as in queen, quiet and equal. The rare exceptions have a list of their own.
• ph – usually sounds like F: phone, dolphin, graph. Most of these words came into English from Greek.
• gh – sometimes silent (night, daughter), sometimes an F sound (laugh, rough), and sometimes a hard G (ghost).
• ck – a K sound after a short vowel: duck, ticket, pocket.
• oo and ee – double vowels that make long sounds: moon, tree, sleep.
• ough – one of the trickiest spellings in English, with several different sounds: though, through, bought, rough.
• x and z – rare letters that are worth hunting for in word games.

Ways to use words containing certain letters

Phonics and spelling

Letter groups like sh, ch, ai and igh make the same sound across many words. A list of common words that contain one of them is a ready-made spelling or reading exercise.

Crosswords and puzzles

Sometimes you know a chunk of the answer but not where it goes. Search for the chunk, pick a length, and scan the common words. If you know the exact positions, the crossword helper is faster.

Word games

Stuck with an awkward pair of letters, like Q and U or two Zs? Find words that use them, then check which ones you can build with the rest of your letters in the word unscrambler.

Word searches and worksheets

Build a themed word search around one sound, or turn a list into a scrambled-word worksheet with the word scramble generator.

Curiosity

Some letter groups turn up in surprising places. Scroll the rare words and see how many you can define.

Tips

• Shorter is broader. One letter matches tens of thousands of words; three or four letters match far fewer.
• Combine filters. Add a start or an end to a "containing" list to zero in on a word fast.
• Need every filter at once? The advanced word search mixes patterns, excluded letters, length and part of speech.
• Starts or ends only? Browse words that start with or words that end in any letters.