4 Letter Words
The 240 most common English words with 4 letters, grouped alphabetically.
Four-letter words are the connective tissue of English and the backbone of almost every crossword grid you will ever fill in. This page lists the most common four-letter words in alphabetical groups, so you can scan a whole letter at once or jump straight to the pattern you need. Short words carry real weight in puzzles: OVER, EACH, IRON, IDEA and ALOE keep coming back because grid designers rely on them to lock the long answers into place. Crossword regulars such as OBOE, EPEE and ETUI are worth memorizing for the same reason, since they solve corners that longer words simply cannot reach. Use the filter to set the length, the first letter and the last letter, and the list narrows as you type, which helps when you have two crossing letters and one blank square left.
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Common questions
How many four-letter words are there in English?
Large reference dictionaries list several thousand four-letter entries once you count inflected forms, archaic spellings and technical terms. The list on this page stays with the words you actually meet in everyday reading and in puzzles, which keeps it around a few hundred entries and much faster to scan. That is usually the better trade for solving: a shorter list of familiar words gets you to the answer sooner than a complete inventory of everything a dictionary will accept.
Which four-letter words show up most often in crosswords?
Vowel-heavy words earn their place in grids because they cross well with almost anything. AREA, IDEA, ALOE, OBOE, IOTA and ETUI appear constantly for that reason, along with everyday words such as ONCE, EACH, IRON and OVER. Compilers reach for them when a corner needs three crossings to work at once. Learning two dozen of these regulars will speed up your solving more than learning any single long word.
How do I find a four-letter word when I already know some letters?
Set the length to four in the filter, then add the starting letter, the ending letter, or both. If your clue gives you the middle letters instead, filter by the letters you do have and scan the results, since four-letter lists stay short enough to read at a glance. Working from the ending letter is often the fastest route, because plural and past-tense endings cut the field down quickly.