Ultimate Word & Text Toolkit

Word Finder

Combine filters to narrow a word list of about 16,750 common English words: pattern matching with ? wildcards, exact length, starting letters, ending letters and required letters.

Runs entirely in your browser — your text is never uploaded

Set at least one filter to search the dictionary.

How to use Word Finder

  1. Enter a pattern such as c?t where ? matches any single letter.
  2. Add extra filters — starts with, ends with, contains, or exact length.
  3. Leave any field blank to ignore that filter.
  4. Copy the results you need.

Examples

Input

pattern: c?t

Result

cat, cot, cut

Input

starts: pre, length: 7

Result

prevent, precise, premium, present

What you can type into Word Finder

Pattern
Each ? stands for exactly one unknown letter, so the pattern length is the word length: c?t matches cat, cot and cut but never cart. Letters other than ? are matched literally.
Starts with / ends with
Plain letters only — question marks are ignored in these two fields. Use them when you know the beginning or ending but not the total length.
Contains
Every letter you type must appear somewhere in the word, in any position and in any order.
Length
An exact letter count. Leave it blank to search all lengths. Input is lowercased, and anything that is not a letter or ? is ignored.

How the results behave

All filters apply together
Filters narrow each other rather than widening the search, so a pattern plus a contains letter plus a length returns only words that satisfy all three.
Grouped by length
Matches are grouped from shortest to longest so you can jump to the group that fits your slot.
Capped list
A search returns up to 400 matches so the page stays fast. When you see a full 400 results, add a length or letter filter to see the part of the list you actually need.

Tips

  • Start with the constraint you are most certain about — usually the length — then add letters one at a time.
  • If a pattern returns nothing, replace your least certain letter with a ? before assuming the word is not in the list.

Common mistakes

  • Using * or _ as the wildcard. Only ? works here.
  • Typing a pattern shorter than the answer: a 5-letter slot needs five characters, including question marks.

About the word finder

Crossword and puzzle solvers who know a few letters and a length, teachers building spelling or phonics lists, and word-game players checking whether a candidate word exists at all.

Crossword grids give you a length and a few confirmed letters. A pattern search turns those constraints into an answer list in one step: fix the letters you know and leave the rest as wildcards.

The same filters help with word games, teaching phonics, building spelling lists and checking whether a candidate name or slug is a real word.

Accuracy and limitations

  • Results come from this site's own list of about 16,750 words drawn from common written English. It is not an official game or tournament dictionary: rare, technical and inflected words can be missing, while some names, place names and abbreviations are included even though most word games would reject them. Always check a result against the rules of the game you are playing.

Frequently asked questions

What does the ? wildcard mean?

Each ? stands for exactly one unknown letter, so ?at matches bat, cat, eat and so on.

Can I combine filters?

Yes. All filters apply together, so you can require a pattern, a length and a contained letter at once.

How large is the dictionary?

About 16,750 common English words. It is a general word list rather than an unabridged dictionary, so results stay relevant but some rare, technical and proper-noun entries are missing.

Read more

Ready-made word lists

Prefer to browse instead of search? These lists are already built.

Related tools

Words Starting With

Find every word that begins with a letter or prefix.

Open tool

Words Ending With

Find every word that ends with a letter or suffix.

Open tool

Words With Letters

List words that contain the letters you specify.

Open tool

Word Unscrambler

Turn jumbled letters into every word you can make.

Open tool