Two-letter words are the smallest plays in the game and some of the most valuable. They let you tuck a word alongside another one, score in two directions at once, and get rid of awkward tiles. Strong Scrabble players learn every one of them early, and the list is shorter than most people think.
The ENABLE word list, which JumbleFix uses for game words, has exactly 96 two-letter words. Here is every one, grouped so they stick, with what each means.
A few facts first
- 96 words in total. That is fewer than four per letter of the alphabet.
- Four letters never appear in any of them: C, Q, V and Z. If you are holding one of those, a two-letter play is not an option.
- Five have no A, E, I, O or U: BY, HM, MM, MY and SH.
- Four are made only of vowels: AA, AE, AI and OE. These are lifesavers when your rack is all vowels.
- A starts the most two-letter words (16), followed by O (12) and E (10). O and A also end the most.
- The highest scorers are AX, EX, JO, OX, XI and XU, at 9 face-value points each in Scrabble.
The everyday words (24)
You already know these: AM, AN, AS, AT, BE, BY, DO, GO, HE, IF, IN, IS, IT, ME, MY, NO, OF, ON, OR, SO, TO, UP, US and WE.
They are a quarter of the list, which is a good start. The rest is where the points hide.
Interjections (17)
The sounds people make when they talk, all perfectly playable:
- AH, OH and HA: surprise, delight or a laugh.
- AW: sympathy or mild disappointment.
- EH: asking someone to repeat themselves.
- ER, UH and UM: hesitation.
- HI: a greeting. YO is a louder one.
- HM: thinking it over. MM is agreement or something tasting good.
- HO: calling for attention, as in "land ho."
- LO: look, as in "lo and behold."
- OW: pain. OY: dismay.
- SH: asking for quiet.
Letters of the alphabet (7)
Several letters have spelled-out names that count as words:
- AR (R), EF (F), ES (S).
- EL (L), which also means an elevated railway.
- EM (M) and EN (N), which are also printers' measures of width.
- EX (X), which can also mean a former partner or to cross something out.
Musical notes (7)
The solfege scale gives you a run of short words: FA, LA, MI, RE and TI, plus SI, an older name for TI, and UT, an older name for DO. DO and SO are notes too, but they already sit in the everyday group.
Greek and Hebrew letters (5)
- MU, NU, PI and XI are letters of the Greek alphabet.
- PE is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
XI is especially useful: the X earns 8 points on its own, and XI can be played in many spots.
Borrowed and specialized words (36)
These are the ones that win games, because opponents often do not believe them.
- AA: a kind of rough, broken lava, from Hawaiian.
- AB: an abdominal muscle.
- AD: an advertisement.
- AE: one, in Scots.
- AG: agriculture, or agricultural.
- AI: a three-toed sloth.
- AL: an East Indian tree.
- AX: a variant spelling of axe.
- AY: a yes vote, like aye.
- BA: the soul, in ancient Egyptian belief.
- BI: short for bisexual.
- BO: a pal or friend.
- DE: of or from, used in names.
- ED: education, as in driver's ed.
- ET: a dialect past tense of eat.
- ID: the part of the mind that holds basic drives.
- JO: a sweetheart, in Scots.
- KA: the spiritual self, in ancient Egyptian belief.
- LI: a Chinese unit of distance.
- MA: mother.
- MO: a moment, as in "wait a mo."
- NA: no or not.
- NE: born with the name of, like née.
- OD: a natural force once thought to fill all of nature.
- OE: a whirlwind off the Faroe Islands.
- OM: a sacred sound chanted in meditation.
- OP: op art, a style of abstract art built on optical effects.
- OS: a bone.
- OX: the farm animal.
- PA: father.
- TA: thank you, in British slang.
- UN: one, as in "a good un."
- WO: woe.
- XU: a former unit of money in Vietnam.
- YA: you.
- YE: you, as in "hear ye."
Why they matter so much
A two-letter word is rarely worth many points by itself. Its value is in what it lets you do:
- Parallel plays. Laying a word right alongside another one forms several two-letter words at once, and each scores. That is how a short word with an X or a J on a premium square can earn more than a long word in an open lane.
- Getting rid of bad tiles. Four all-vowel words (AA, AE, AI, OE) mean a rack full of vowels is never hopeless.
- Fitting tight spots. When the board is crowded, a two-letter play is often the only legal move.
Newer official words
Official Scrabble dictionaries have added a few two-letter words since ENABLE was finished, including QI and ZA. They are not on the ENABLE list counted here. If your game accepts them, they are excellent plays; check your game's own dictionary before relying on them.
To see what any rack can make, including every two-letter play, try the Scrabble word finder, or score a word with the word score calculator.
How we counted
We started from the ENABLE word list, a public-domain list used by many word games (172,823 words), and kept the 155,976 words that are also active on JumbleFix. Exactly 96 of them have two letters. The meanings above are short summaries of each word's most common sense in word-game dictionaries.
Written by Morty Leonid with AI assistance. Every count in this article comes from queries against the JumbleFix word list.