Scrabble 7th Edition 2023

(Last Updated On: June 17, 2023)

Ten New Word Lists!

Scrabble 7th Edition 2023The Scrabble 7th Edition dictionary has arrived, and here is your update of useful word lists! These update my 6th Edition lists in a previous blog.

Note added 6/17/2023: I corrected a typo in List 1, Useful Words (thank you, Bruce W!)

By “dictionary” I mean the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) published by Merriam-Webster. OSPD has many plusses: it’s easy to use, thoughtfully curated, includes definitions so we can learn new words and (in printed form) never needs to recharge its battery! Its minor annoyance is that it omits a few naughty or insulting words, and that only becomes an issue when you really, really wish you could score a lot of points by playing F**K.

These word lists are useful to help you learn legal words and when you can play them. And if you choose to use some version of Friendly Rules for Scrabble (latest version HERE), you may use these lists during play to help you score more points. Once again, I thank Richard Pavlicek for creating the original version of these “friendly” house rules.

I’ll first give you what (I think) you came for, the word lists. Then I’ll discuss what I learned while putting together this information for all of us to use.

Note: These word lists are PDF files to make them easy to read. Please contact me (art@artchester.net) if you can offer corrections, or if you would like an editable (Microsoft Office) version of these lists.

2023 Scrabble Word Lists

  1. Useful Words

The OSPD includes a Useful Words list that I expanded slightly. I consider Super Scrabble a superior game for friendly play, so I show the number of tiles of each letter for both the regular and the Super game. Here is my 7th Edition Useful Words List, as corrected.

Here are some changes in the 7th Edition compared with the 6th: The words GYP and GYPS, derived from the term “gypsy”, were removed as offensive. The word HMMM was added.

  1. J Words

OSPD includes a list of two- to six-letter words containing the consonants J, Q, X and Z. I find this material more useful when separated into four separate lists. Here is the 7th Ed 2 to 6 Letter Words Containing J List.

The Seventh Edition has 675 J words, adding JEDI, YAJE, JEDIS, YAJES and JAMOKE. This list also adds the words JIMPLY, JOKILY and JOWLED which I erroneously omitted from my older lists.

  1. Q Words

Here is the 7th Ed 2 to 6 Letter Words Containing Q List.

There are 290 words in the new Q list. The only additions in the Seventh Edition are QUESO and QUESOS.

  1. X Words

Here is the 7th Ed 2 to 6 Letter Words Containing X List.

There are 705 words in the new X list. There are 19 additions in the Seventh Edition, which are DOX, VAX, DOXX, FOLX, VAXX, BOTOX, DEIXES, plus inflections of these. In addition, I added 11 words I missed in previous lists.

  1. Z Words

Here is the 7th Ed 2 to 6 Letter Words Containing Z List.

There are 836 words in the new Z list. There are 6 additions in the Seventh Edition, which are ZUKES, SKEEZY, ZAATAR, ZEDONK, ZONKEY, ZOODLE and ZOOMER. In addition, I added 13 words I missed in previous lists.

  1. Three-Letter Words

The Seventh Edition does not make any changes in the list of 107 two-letter words. However, it adds a net of three three-letter words, giving a new list of 1,070 words. Here is the 7th Ed 3 letter Words List.

The eight new words are ACK, ARO, ATS, BAE, DOX, FAM, FAV and VAX. Five words were removed for being rude or offensive: FAG, FEM, GIP, GYP and SEG.

  1. 2 To Make 3 (Hangs List)

One of the most useful Scrabble lists is a Hangs list. When there’s a two-letter word already on the playing board, this list tells you all the three-letter words that can be formed by adding one letter to the front or back of the existing word. Here is the 7th Ed 2 to make 3 Hangs List.

There are 7 additions in the Seventh Edition hangs list: ARO, ATS, BAE, DOX, FAM, FAV and VAX. At the same time, there are three deletions in this edition: FAG, FEM, GIP.

  1. 3 To Make 4 (Hangs List)

A Hangs List to make three-letter words into four-letter words is much longer, and not often seen. Nevertheless, sometimes it is very useful. Here is the 7th Ed 3 to make 4 Hangs List.

  1. Difficult Double Letters (C H I K U V W Y)

When your playing rack contains two C’s, or any of some other difficult letters, you sometimes would like to know words that allow you to get rid of both of them at once. Here is the 7th Edition Words w.CC,HH,II,KK,UU,VV,WW,YY List.

This list is limited to words of 3, 4 and 5 letters. Extending this list to six-letter words would make it very long and not necessarily more useful.

As I have done in the past, I added all the 7- and 8-letter words ending in UOUS in the otherwise blank space at the end of this list.

  1. Many Vowels List

Another kind of dilemma is having too many vowels in your playing rack. To help players struggling with this problem, I compiled the 7th Edition Words with Many Vowels List.

There are three kinds of words on this list:
(1) Two- and three-letter words that are 100% AEIOU vowels
(2) Four- through eight-letter words that are at least 66% AEIOU vowels (a notable new word in the Seventh Edition is ARIE)
(3) Nine- and more-letter words with at least 66% AEIOU vowels.

The (1) and (2) words come from the Seventh Edition OSPD. OSPD includes >8 letter words only if they are modifications of words with fewer letters. Therefore, as a source for additional longer words I use the 2020 NASPA Word List from NASPA Games.

Comments on the Scrabble 7th Edition Dictionary

I gave the date 2023 to this blog even though media articles announced and described the Seventh Edition dictionary in late 2022. That is because although the 7th Edition first printing carries the date August 2022, the publisher offered it for sale and copyrighted it in the year 2023.

Exactly how many new words are in the 7th Edition? Merriam-Webster says “around 500”. The website Scoop.it reports that there are 489 added words, of which more than half are inflections of existing or new words. Thus the number of completely new words is, say, two-hundred-ish.

            New, New Words!

What are some of these new words? Merriam-Webster teased the public by making only a few examples available in each media interview. Here are a few that I assembled by scouring the media and looking into the book itself:

  • 49 new stand-alone words: ack, adorbs, ambigram, arie, aro, bae, boricua, botox, convo, covid, dox, doxx, dumpster, eggcorn, emailer, embiggen, fam, fav, folx, grawlix, guac, hangry, hmmm, hygge, inspo, jedi, kharif, matcha, onesie, oppo, pranayam, roid, sitch, skeezy, slushee, spork, stan, swole, thingie, vaquita, vax, vaxx, welp, yaje, yeehaw, zedonk/zeedonk/zonkey, zoomer
  • 14 compound words: allyship, amirite, babymoon, deadname, deepfake, dogpile, fauxhawk, fintech, headbutt, hogsbane, nutball, pageview, shoutout, subtweet
  • 11 food-related words: horchata, iftar, jamoke, kabocha, marg, mofongo, queso, wagyu, zaatar, zoodle, zuke
  • 7 new verbs: adult, at, ixnay, pants, torrent, verb, vibe
  • 4 new “un” words: unfollow, unmalted, unmute, unsub
  • 4 (and perhaps more) new plurals: arie, ats, deixes, inkings

In addition to these 89 examples, there are added inflections such as plurals and verb endings (-ing, -ed).

These words are in popular use by many of our fellow Americans. However, I find many of them unfamiliar, and perhaps you do too. And that’s great! It’s a good reason to acquire the new dictionary, open the pages and fill in our gaps in awareness of the culture around us!

Before Merriam-Webster released the printed Scrabble 7th Edition dictionary, it made available a word finder and online lookup tool. This reference source is convenient, but it is not exactly the same as the physical dictionary: I can’t tell you how many words are missing, but among words of four or fewer letters, the online function is missing LOR, MES, GEAN and HMMM.

Is the Scrabble 7th Edition Dictionary in your home, or in your digital book file? Then you have a window into the continual evolution of the (American and Canadian) English language that we speak, and a tool for enjoying one of the world’s great word games – Scrabble.


Copyright Credit:
The name Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States and Canada, and of Mattel, Inc. in the rest of the world.

Useful Sources:
Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD), 7th Edition, 2022/2023

Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder: a word search tool to find words that can be made from any combination of letters, including up to two blanks
Zyzzvya, a word search tool maintained by NASPA Games (formerly North American Scrabble Players Association): it incorporates lexicons from three sources, including Collins Scrabble Words, a huge 279,077-word international list.
Richard’s Scrabble Rules by Richard Pavlicek

Image Credit: Scrabble board image by Art Chester

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