Every school teaches that a word needs a vowel. Word games disagree, politely. The JumbleFix word list has 20 words that contain none of A, E, I, O and U, and not even a Y. Another 101 get by with Y as their only vowel.
That makes these words rare, a little odd, and extremely useful when your rack is a wall of consonants. Here is the complete set.
The 20 words with no vowels at all
Most of them are sounds people make, which is why they never needed a vowel to begin with.
- HM, HMM: the sound of thinking something over.
- MM: agreement, or something tasting good.
- SH, SHH: asking for quiet.
- BRR, BRRR: the sound of being cold.
- PFFT: something fizzling out, or a dismissive sniff.
- PSST: getting someone's attention quietly.
- PHT, PHPHT: mild annoyance.
- TSK, TSKS, TSKTSK, TSKTSKS: the click of the tongue that means disapproval. As verbs, you can TSK at someone, and if you do it twice, you TSKTSK them.
- NTH: to the utmost degree, as in "to the nth power."
- CWM, CWMS: a bowl-shaped hollow at the head of a mountain valley, from Welsh, where W can act as a vowel.
- CRWTH, CRWTHS: an ancient Celtic stringed instrument, also from Welsh.
The longest is TSKTSKS, at seven letters, which is also the most efficient way to express disappointment ever recorded in a dictionary.
The 101 words where Y is the only vowel
Y earns its "sometimes a vowel" reputation here. There are 101 game words whose only vowel is Y:
- 2 letters: BY and MY.
- 3 letters: 22, including CRY, DRY, FLY, FRY, GYM, PLY, PRY, PYX, SHY, SKY, SLY, SPY, STY, THY, TRY, WHY and WRY.
- 4 letters: 22, including CYST, GYMS, HYMN, LYNX, MYTH, SCRY, SPRY, SYNC and XYST.
- 5 letters: 34, the largest group, including CRYPT, DRYLY, FLYBY, GLYPH, HYMNS, LYMPH, MYRRH, MYTHS, NYMPH, PSYCH, SHYLY, SLYLY, SYLPH, SYNTH, TRYST and WRYLY.
- 6 letters: 19, including CRYPTS, GLYPHS, NYMPHS, RHYTHM, SPRYLY and SYZYGY.
- 7 letters: 2, GLYCYLS and RHYTHMS.
RHYTHMS is the champion everyday word here: seven letters, one Y, no other vowel, and it comes up in conversation more than you would think. SYZYGY, an alignment of three bodies in space such as the sun, the moon and the earth, manages three Ys in six letters, which is its own small alignment.
Many of these come from Greek, where Y stood for a vowel sound in the first place: CRYPT, GLYPH, MYTH, NYMPH, PSYCH, RHYTHM and SYZYGY all came into English that way.
When to play them
When your rack has no vowels. A rack of consonants feels hopeless until you remember TSK, NTH, CWM, PSST and BRR. Each one lets you play off three or four consonants and draw fresh tiles.
When you have a Y and nothing else. A single Y turns a dead rack into options: MYTH, HYMN, LYMPH, NYMPH, SYLPH, TRYST and CRYPT all need nothing but consonants and that one Y.
When you want to block. Short consonant-only words fit into tight spots on a crowded board where nothing with vowels can go.
When your opponent is about to challenge. Most players have never seen CRWTH or CWM. Knowing they are valid is worth a lot of points, and a little smugness.
A quick list to memorize
If you only learn a handful, learn these, because they are short and come up often:
- NTH
- TSK
- CWM
- PSST
- BRR
- SHH and HMM
- CRWTH (for showing off)
To find what a consonant-heavy rack can make, try the Scrabble word finder, or look up any of these words, such as CWM, for its full entry.
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. We counted words that contain none of A, E, I, O, U and Y (20 words), and words whose only vowel is Y (101 words, counting each spelling once).
Written by Morty Leonid with AI assistance. Every count in this article comes from queries against the JumbleFix word list.