8 Letter Words
The 240 most common English words with 8 letters, grouped alphabetically.
Eight-letter words are the top division of word puzzles, and they behave differently from shorter answers. At this length most words are built rather than memorized: a root plus a prefix, a suffix, or both. Once you see that, an eight-letter blank stops being intimidating. QUESTION, MOUNTAIN, ELEPHANT and SUNLIGHT are straightforward vocabulary, while CREATION, DONATION, VACATION and EQUATION all share the same -ATION tail, and DARKNESS, KINDNESS, BOLDNESS and FONDNESS all share -NESS. Prefixes work the same way, giving you UNSTABLE, UNBROKEN, UNLOCKED and UNCOMMON from four short roots. This page lists the most common eight-letter words in alphabetical groups. Set the length to eight in the filter, add the first or last letter, and let the ending do most of the narrowing for you.
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Common questions
What is the fastest way to crack an eight-letter word?
Look at the last four letters before anything else. If they read -TION, -NESS, -MENT, -ABLE or -ANCE, you are dealing with a built word and only need the root. CREATION, DARKNESS and NOTATION all fall out instantly once the ending is fixed. Filtering on the final letter and scanning the group is usually faster than trying to recall the whole word from the clue alone.
Which prefixes turn up most in eight-letter words?
UN- is the workhorse, giving UNSTABLE, UNBROKEN, UNLOCKED and UNCOMMON. RE-, DIS-, PRE- and OVER- follow close behind and reliably add two to four letters to a familiar root. When an eight-letter answer starts with a vowel-consonant pair that looks odd, try reading it as a prefix and see whether a normal word is hiding behind it.
Do eight-letter words appear often in puzzles?
They anchor the long entries in larger crosswords and are the payoff answers in anagram and word-building games, where a full eight-letter solution usually scores the most. In a fifteen-square grid an eight-letter entry spans more than half the width, so it crosses many short answers at once. Solving it early tends to open up an entire section of the puzzle.