Words Starting With W

W Words: The Anglo-Saxon Survivor

W is one of the most purely English letters in the alphabet. While C, J, Q, and Z rely heavily on Latin, French, Arabic, and Greek borrowings, W-starters are overwhelmingly Germanic in origin. WALK, WATER, WEATHER, WIND, WINTER, WOOD, WORD, WORK, WORLD, WRITE — these words have been in English since before the Norman Conquest. That Anglo-Saxon heritage shows in how W-starters tend to be short, blunt, and concrete. The average W word is shorter than the average for most other letters: the largest cluster sits at 7 letters, and the list thins out rapidly past 10. You won't find many 15-letter W words because English doesn't build long technical terms from Germanic roots the way it does from Latin ones.

First interesting fact: W is the only English letter whose name has more than one syllable ("double-u"). It literally was a double U in medieval manuscripts — scribes wrote UU to represent the /w/ sound that didn't exist in Latin. The ligature eventually merged into today's W shape. Second fact: the WH- spelling in WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, and WHICH originally represented a distinct sound (like blowing out a candle before the vowel), and some dialects still pronounce it. These WH- question words are crossword cornerstones because they're short, universally known, and cross with everything. For Scrabble, W is worth 4 points and has strong two-letter options: WE and WO. The real value of W in Scrabble is in short, punchy plays: WAR, WAX, WEB, WED, WET, WIG, WIN, WIT, WOE, WOK, WON, WOW.

Tip: WAX scores 13 points for three tiles thanks to the X, making it one of the best short plays that combines two mid-to-high-value letters. Don't overlook it when the board has an open spot near an A. For other Anglo-Saxon letter groups, try words starting with Y and words starting with N. If you're looking for the Latin-heavy counterpart, words starting with C provides an interesting contrast. Also check words ending in W for patterns like -OW and -EW that pair naturally with W-starters in crossword grids.

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