Is that a word?
The question that settles arguments. Type a word and you get a straight yes or no, what it means where we have a definition, and what it is worth in Scrabble, Words With Friends and Wordfeud. No result pages, no redirect to a dictionary site.
What "invalid" actually means
A red answer here does not mean the word is not English. It means it is not in a word-game list, and those exclude whole categories of perfectly ordinary language.
- Proper nouns. London, Newton, Tuesday. All real, none playable.
- Abbreviations. TV, NASA, etc.
- Hyphenated words. The hyphen has no tile.
- Anything with an apostrophe. Same reason.
- Collins-only words. We patch the two-letter set and are otherwise short of Collins.
If a word fails and none of those apply, it is most likely a Collins word that our public-domain list does not carry. Keep playing it at your club.
Words that surprise people
All of these are valid. Check any of them.
Not a rulebook
This will answer nearly every kitchen-table dispute correctly. It will not settle a tournament, and the disclaimer says so plainly. Where a game matters, the official dictionary for that game is the authority.
If it is not a word, what can those letters make?
A failed check is usually the start of a different question. These take the same letters somewhere useful.
About checking words
Is this the official Scrabble dictionary?
No. If you play to Collins, as British clubs and tournaments do, this is not an adjudicator. Our list is the public-domain ENABLE plus the modern two-letter additions, which is smaller than Collins. The about page sets out exactly what that means.
For a casual game at home it will answer almost every question correctly. For anything that matters, the official dictionary in force for your game is the only authority.
It says a word is invalid but I am sure it is real
Most likely it is real and simply not playable. Proper nouns, abbreviations, hyphenated words and anything with an apostrophe are all excluded by the rules of both games, no matter how ordinary they are. PARIS, TV, WELL-KNOWN and DON'T are all out.
The other common cause is that the word is valid under Collins and not in our list. Collins is the more generous of the two lists in circulation and holds several thousand words ours does not, so an ordinary-looking British word is the likeliest kind to be missing.
Why is there no definition for a valid word?
Our definitions come from Webster's 1913, which is public domain and therefore free to ship, but it only covers about 48,000 of our 171,280 words. Inflections in particular are usually missing: you will find RUN but not RUNNINGS.
A word being valid and having no definition here are unrelated facts.
What do the three scores mean?
The same word scored on three different tables. Scrabble, Words With Friends and Wordfeud each value letters differently, so a word can be a strong play in one and unremarkable in another. All three are bare face value, before any premium square.
Can I check several words at once?
Not on this page, which is deliberately one word at a time so it can show you the definition and the scores properly. If you want to work through a list, the fastest route is to check them individually, since each lookup is instant once the word list has loaded.