In
this awesome post you will learn a lot about two letter scrabble words cheats
and guru tricks. It's no big secret that one of the first steps to becoming
better at Scrabble (and for that matter, Ban-anagrams, Diddler, Upwards, Words with
Friends, and similar games) is to know your two-letter words really well.
Playing a short-to-medium length word parallel to an opponent's word, forming a
whole slew of secondary two-letter words is my favorite thing to do in life. It
racks up loads of points even with low-value tiles, and tends to not give away
high-scoring opportunities to your opponents. Indeed, according to some guy on
the internet, 75% of Scrabble words played are between two and four letters
long, and 50% of points earned are from those 2-4 letter words. Memorizing all
the three- and four-letter words in the English language is a pretty daunting
task, but memorizing the TWO-letter words is not hard at all-- there aren't
that many-- and once that's done, learning the two-make-three words (meaning
the three-letter words that can be made from existing two-letter words) would
probably be a good next step. That, and learning the three-letter words with J,
Q, X, or Z.
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2 Letter Scrabble Words |
But
lets not get ahead of ourselves. Step one is to learn the official two-letter
words. The official Scrabble app on Facebook has a convenient built-in
list of two-letter words-- just one of the many reasons why the real Scrabble
app is better than Words With Friends-- but I don't like lists of words without
definitions, so I put together a list of all the valid two-letter words along
with definitions, random comments, digressive rants, and a few mnemonics for
some of the harder-to-remember words. Enjoy.
Two Letter Scrabble Words!
AA - Aa (pronounced "ah-ah") is
a type of lava, the rocky, "extra chunky" kind... as opposed to the
smooth, extra creamy type of lava known as "pahoehoe". (Pahoehoe is
also a valid Scrabble word, but I don't imagine it gets played quite as often
as aa). Aa can also be validly pluralized as "aas", though I don't
know how much sense it makes to refer to lava in the plural. It's acceptable in
Scrabble though.
AB - What do you get if you have six-pack
abs and subtract five of them? You're left with one ab. No, I'm not making that
up.
AD - Ads are the annoying
things on TV people used to watch before they all got Tivos and DVRs.
AE - Scottish for
"one", as in, "tha' sassenach's ae bonnie lass". The
Official Scrabble Dictionary is kind of inconsistent as far as including
Scottish/Welsh/etc words. Thus, "ae" and "cwm" are
arbitrarily considered valid words, but "ch" and "crwd"
arbitrarily aren't. Ch! Bludy sassenachs!
AG - short for agriculture.
For some reason, the plural of this word, "ags", is acceptable.
Actually a pretty good rule of thumb is that you can almost always pluralize a
noun in Scrabble, even if it would make little or no logical sense to do so in
any conceivable actual sentence.
AH - as in, "ah, finally
you played a word". It turns out that "ahs" is also valid (think
"oohs and ahs"), as is "aah" and "aha"... BUT
"ahh" is invalid; if you have two H's, don't try to play
"ahh" or "ehh" like a noob; see if you can play
"pahoehoe" and post a picture of it on Facebook.
AI - Ai, pronounced like
"AH-ee", is what they used to call the three-toed sloth before they
decided it was too confusing, but the words "ai" and "ais"
are still acceptable for Scrabble purposes.
AM - as in, "I am not
going to explain this word".
AN - as in, "an easy word
that I'm also not going to explain".
AR - the spelled-out name of
the letter "R". No, I'm not joking. All Enlgish letters have official
spelled-out names that you can use in Scrabble, though some are more useful
than others. The most interesting letter names are probably ar, es, ef, em, en,
ex, cee, zee, and zed (the British say "zed" instead of
"zee" for the letter Z).
AS - as in, "as in, 'as
in, «as in,...»'". If I had infinite styles of quote marks I could make
this definition infinitely recursive.
AT - as in, "where you
at, foo'?"
AW - as in, "aw,
shucks". Note that "aww" is NOT acceptable.
AX - like a hatchet, but
bigger. Obviously, "axe" is also acceptable. Fun fact: if you have an
X and at least one of any vowel (not counting Y), you can get rid of your X
easily: ax, ex, ox, xi, xu... all valid words. Playing an X in such a way that
it spells two two-letter words, e.g. "ax" one way and "xi"
the other way, will score the eight-point X twice-- an essential move to have
in your Scrabble arsenal. So now you'll be happy to see that X in your tray
instead of annoyed. You're welcome. ;)
AY - acceptable variant
spelling of "aye". Also, ays (as in, "the ays have it") is
acceptable.
BA - No, not the sound a sheep
makes. That's spelled "baa" (which is also a valid word). The ba is
an aspect of the soul in ancient Egyptian mythology. Can be plural,
"bas". (See also: KA for more about Egyptian mythology).
BE - as in, "why you be
trippin'?" Incidentally, "bes" is a valid Scrabble word, but not
because it's plural of "be". Bes is an alternate spelling of the
Hebrew letter bet/beth. (see FE below for more about Hebrew letters). (Note [9/13/2012 ]: "Bes"
is not a valid WWF word, though it is a valid Scrabble word.).
BI - short for bisexual. If
you play "bi" against your 78 year-old grandmother, you will probably
have to explain what it's short for-- and possibly you may then have to explain
what the long version means also, and then explain how, when, and why you
learned such a word. If you are not comfortable doing this, just remember those
immortal words attributed to Vince Lombardi: "winning isn't everything;
it's the only thing." And then watch in horror as she back-hooks your
"bi" with the plural form "bis" and says "in yo face,
young whippersnapper".
BO - acceptable variant
spelling of "beau", a fancypants word for boyfriend. Both words are
pronounced the same way and both are valid Scrabble words. Bo can be pluralized
as "bos", and beau can be pluralized as either "beaus" or
"beaux" if you are REALLY pretentious.
BY - think of this as an
alternate spelling of "bye", as in, "there are only seven teams
in the tournament, so one will get a by." If you think of it that way,
you'll remember that the plural form "bys" is also acceptable.
DE - meaning "from",
like the French word. I can't explain why some French loan-words like
"de" and "qua" and "beaux" and "cirque"
made it into the Scrabble dictionary while other at-least-as-equally well-known
French loan-words like "moi" and "cheri" didn't. I guess
"moi" and "cheri" just don't have that je ne sais quoi.
DO - as in, "do I have to
explain this one?". Also we have "do" as in,
"do-re-mi", the musical scale song from "The Sound of
Music". All the do-re-mi music note names are valid Scrabble words: do,
re, mi, fa, so, la, and ti/si, and all can be pluralized, since you might have
to sing several "dos" in a row (especially if you sing bass). Note
that the do-re-mi semitones like "ri" and "le", etc, are
NOT considered valid, however.
ED - as in, "special
ed".
EF - the letter F (see AR
above for explanation).
EH - The E on my car's fuel gauge
stands for "Eh, there's still a little bit left."
EL - an elevated train, like
they have in Chicago .
Also, the letter L.
EM - the letter M.
EN - the letter N.
ER - British for
"uh". No doubt much popularized by Harry Potter, who said it a lot in
the books.
ES - the letter S. Can also be
spelled "ess".
ET - variant of
"ate", as in, "I reckon I done et up some cheesy grits,
y'all", which is something Mitt Romney might have said while he was
campaigning in Alabama
and Mississippi
not too long ago.
EX - the letter X, or could be
short for ex-spouse, etc.
FA - a long-long way to run.
(See "DO" above for notes about the do-re-mi musical notes).
FE - a Hebrew letter which
also can be spelled "feh". It may surprise you to know that all the
Hebrew letters are valid, and many have multiple official variant spellings and
can help you get rid of annoying tiles like Q, K, P, or V, which makes them
worth knowing. Some other particularly useful Hebrew letter names are
alef/aleph, beth/bet/bes, tav, vav/vau/vaw/waw, pe/peh, and qoph. And as if
that weren't enough, all these can be pluralized.
GO - in addition to the verb--
which I would hope everyone knows already-- there is also the ancient Japanese
game of "go", which-- being a noun-- can be pluralized as
"gos".
HA - as in, "ha! I bet
you didn't know 'gos' was a real word."
HE - the male personal
pronoun, as in, "he didn't know that 'he' and 'she' can also be considered
nouns in the sense of 'that's not a «he»; that's a «she»,' and thus can be pluralized
as 'hes' and 'shes', respectively".
HI - as in, "hi
there".
HM - as in, "Hm, I don't
have any vowels on my tray so I guess I can't play a word this turn... OH
WAIT". Also valid is "hmm", which is a surprisingly useful word
in Bananagrams (more so than in Scrabble). But "hmmm" and
"hmms" are NOT valid-- have to draw the line somewhere I guess.
HO - as in, "westward
ho!" Unlike most interjections, you can back-hook this one with an S
(i.e., "hos"). But that's because ho is also a noun, as in... ahem...
"bros before hos". I wish you luck explaining "hos" to your
78 year-old grandma. Go for it! Vince Lombardi!
ID - The id, together with the
ego and superego, comprise the psyche, according to Freud. All three parts of
the psyche are valid words, as are their plural forms: ids, egos, and
superegos.
IF - as in, "if you learn
all the official two-letter words, you will improve your Scrabble game
greatly". Also: "ifs", as in, "no ifs, ands, or buts"
is valid. "Ands" and "buts" are valid words too, by the
way.
IN - as in, "In the
beginning...". And note that in this case "ins" is acceptable
too since "in" can in fact be a noun, as in "I know the ins and
outs of Scrabble".
IS - as in, "who dat
is?" Note: "dat" is not considered a valid word for some reason.
IT - as in, "I hope you
know what it means".
JO - Scottish for sweetheart.
"Jo" is probably the most useful J-word to know in Scrabble, and
furthermore, jo can also be spelled "joe", which just happens to be
the second most useful J-word. Note that "jos" is invalid; the
correct plural for both is "joes".
KA - another aspect of the
soul according to Egyptian mythology. The ka is said (by dictionary.com) to
survive after death, so I guess that means the ba doesn't survive death? Man, I
need to brush up on my ancient Egyptian mythology-- there might be more useful
Scrabble words to discover. Right now all I got is "ba(s)",
"ka(s)", and "ankh(s)".
KI - variant spelling of qi.
(See QI below and prepare to have your mind BLOWN). "Kis" is the plural.
LA - a note to follow
"so". (See DO above).
LI - a unit of length used in China , about a
third of a mile. "Lis" is valid, even though the Chinese languages
don't have plural inflections like English.
LO - as in, "and lo, I am
with you alway". (Note that "los" is NOT valid). Incidentally,
"alway", the old-timey King James variant of "always", is a
valid Scrabble word too. Other fun King James words to try to use include such
classics as betimes, aright, howbeit and of course thou/thee/thy/thine. While
I'm on the subject, at least one KJV-style finite verb,
"doeth/doest", is valid but most, e.g. "goeth/goest",
"availeth", etc, are not considered valid.
MA - short for
"mother", like Ma Beagle from Duck Tales.
ME - a name I call myself.
Note that "mes" is NOT valid. There's only one me.
MI - a name I call myself
(when singing the do-re-mi song). Note that "mis" IS valid. Also see
"DO" above for notes about the do-re-mi notes.
MM - as in, "mm,
tasty". "Mmm" is also valid. But don't get too crazy--
"mmmm" (with four or more M's) is not valid. That would just be
ridiculous.
MO - short for moment, as in,
"I'll be there in a mo". "Mos" is valid also.
MU - the Greek letter. Just as
the spelled-out names of English and Hebrew letters are considered valid (see
AR and FE above), so too are the spelled-out Greek letters. By far the most
useful of these are mu, nu, pi, xi, tau, and eta. But if you can drop
"omicron" on your opponent, go for it. Feel free to pluralize any of
them.
MY - belonging to me.
NA - meaning "no".
Interestingly, "yesses" and "nos" are valid, but
"nas" is not.
NE - acceptable variant
spelling of "nee", the word used before a married woman's maiden
name.
NO - opposite of
"yes".
NU - the Greek letter (see MU
above for more about that).
OD - "Od" is an
antiquated scientific term, like "phlogistons" or
"choleric", today known only to certain eccentric word-mavens. If
you're curious, in times past, od was thought to be a force pervading the
universe that manifested in both magnetism and hypnotism, and presumably other
ways. It is pronounced the same way as "odd". And although it doesn't
make sense to speak of more than one od, since there isn't even one in
existence, let alone more than one, "ods" is a valid word also.
OE - The Scrabble dictionary
says this is a whirlwind of the Faroe Islands .
I cannot determine if that means that there is a particular type of whirlwind
that only happens there called an "oe", or if it's some weird
loan-word thing (note that they don't speak English in the Faroe Islands, but
Faroese and Danish). Most non-Scrabble dictionaries do not offer a definition
for "oe". I assume it's pronounced "oy". The plural form,
"oes" is valid.
OF - as in, "you should
know the meaning of 'of'". No plural form allowed.
OH - as in, "oh, is it my
turn?" Also it is the spelled-out name of the letter O (see AR above), so
"ohs" is allowed.
OI - British for
"hey", as in, "Oi! What's all this then!?"
ON - Sure, you know this as a
preposition meaning "physically supported by" and an adverb that is
the opposite of "off", but did you know that "on" can be a
noun too? A cricket field is divided into an on side and an off side, referred
to as the on and the off. And since it's a noun, it can be plural:
"ons" and "offs".
OP - short for operation, as
in "black ops" or "spec ops". And if you are wondering,
"spec" is valid also.
OR - Hopefully you know what
the conjunction "or" means, but perhaps you didn't know that it can
be a noun also. The noun "or" is a heraldry term meaning the color
gold, and thus can be plural: "doesn't that coat of arms have pretty ors
and argents?" Many other technical heraldry terms are valid, e.g. blazon,
gules, crosslet, Dexter, guard-ant... but some are not, e.g. chequy, langued.
OS - Now this one is
interesting. There are no less than THREE different words spelled
"os", and all three are pluralized differently! "Os"
meaning "a bone" (pronounce with short O), is pluralized as
"ossa". "Os" meaning "an orifice of the body"
(also pronounced with short O) is pluralized as "ora" (friggin' Latin
plurals, man). And "os" (with LONG O and soft S pronunciation)
meaning "a long esker" (an esker meaning "a serpentine ridge of
gravelly and sandy drift", thank you dictionary.com) is pluralized as
"osar" since it is a Swedish loan-word. Alternatively, you can
pluralize all three as "oses", which is also a valid word.
OW - as in, "ow, that
last word made my brain hurt".
OX - a bull that's been, um,
"fixed". Who knew Scrabble could be so racy? Incidentally, both the
old-school plural "oxen" and the hip, modern "oxes" are
acceptable.
OY - a variant spelling of
"oi".
PA - short for father, as in
"ma and pa".
PE - a Hebrew letter, also
spelled "peh". See FE above for notes about Hebrew letters.
PI - a Greek letter (see MU
above). Fun fact: pi, pe, and our letter P all ultimately derived from the same
Phonecian letter, and all still represent the same sound.
QI - a term from traditional
Chinese medicine/philosophy/martial arts meaning (basically) "spiritual
energy". Or maybe just "breath". (Hard to explain, I guess).
It's also spelled "ki", "khi", or "chi"; probably
the "chi" spelling is seen more commonly, but the qi(s) and ki(s)
spellings will be most useful to you as Scrabble words. Fun fact: when
"qi" was made an official word in the fourth edition of the Official
Scrabble Players' Dictionary (OSPD4), the Scrabble world was thrown into mass chaos
with rioting in the streets and people calling for the point-value of the
Q-tile to be changed. This is because the existence of "qi"
completely changes the dynamics of how you play the Q-tile. I would say for
myself, I probably play "qi" at least two-thirds of the time I get a
Q in my tray (two ways if possible for huge points, or QI one way and QAT or
QOPH the other way for even huger points).
RE - a golden drop of sun (see
DO above).
SH - interjection meaning
"be quiet". It's another possibility (along with the aforementioned
"hm" and "mm") when you have no vowels in your tray.
"Shh" is also valid. While I'm thinking about it, there are also a
few longer vowel-less words: nth, brr(r), zzz, crwth, cwm. Technically the W
functions as a vowel in those last two, but let's not get pedantic.
SI - the original spelling of
the do-re-mi note "ti". See DO above. They changed si to ti so the
notes could all begin with different letters.
SO - a needle pulling thread,
i.e. another do-re-mi note. See DO. Also it's a conjunction of course, but if
you think of it as the do-re-mi note, you'll more easily remember that it can
be plural: sos.
TA - The Scrabble dictionary
says "an expression of gratitude". I have no idea in what crazy slang
or regional dialect they say thank you as "ta". Weirdly,
"tas" is also valid even though interjections normally are not
allowed to be plural (except when they also happen to be Hebrew letters or
whatever, as is the case with "hehs"). Regular dictionaries note that
"ta(s)" can be a semitone note on the do-re-mi scale or the third
letter of the Arabic writing system, but other do-re-mi semitones and Arabic
letters are NOT considered valid Scrabble words. I will have to do more
research on this one.
TI - a drink with jam and bread
(see DO for explanation).
TO - the preposition, like
"toward". No noun or verb form so you can't pluralize it.
UH - as in, "uh, is that
really a real word?"
UM - as in, "um, I think
so." Note that "umm" is valid too. But no plural.
UN - means "one", as
in, "I reckon that's a big un right yonder". Uns (as in "big
uns") is acceptable too.
UP - the direction opposite
down. It's also a verb: as in, "he ups the ante", so feel free to
slap an S at the end.
US - the objective
first-person plural pronoun.
UT - the original
"DO" on the do-re-mi scale. Before there was "Do: a deer, a
female deer / Re: a golden drop of sun", etc, there was "Ut queant laxis / resonare
fibris / Mira gestorum /famuli tuorum / Solve
polluti / labii reatum / Sancte Iohannes",
which I think you'll agree is almost as good a mnemonic song for remembering
the major scale as the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic. The note "ut"
(pronounced "oot") was changed to "do" so that the notes
would all start with a consonant and end with a vowel.
WE - the subjective
first-person plural pronoun.
WO - acceptable variant
spelling of "woe". "Wos" is also acceptable.
XI - another Greek letter, my
favorite. See MU above.
XU - a unit of currency in Vietnam ,
pronounced like "sue". Besides the xu, Vietnam also has the hao
(pronounced "how") and the dong (ten xu to the hao and ten hao to the
dong). Fun fact: virtually ALL units of currency, both modern (e.g. dollar,
yen) and obsolete (e.g. denarius, doit), are valid Scrabble words. Besides the
xu, other useful currencies are the hao, dong, euro, yen, yuan (Chinese
currency), doit (a now-obsolete currency in I think the Netherlands ),
sheqel (can also be spelled with a K) and zaire (yes, the zaire was once the
currency of the country Zaire ).
Many can be pluralized with an S, though xu and hao cannot.
YA - variant of
"yeah". Note that "yas" is not valid since there's no noun
or verb form of the word "ya".
YE - as in, "ye who are
spiritual, restore such a one" (...such a one as plays "bi"
against their grandmother, that is).
YO - as in, "yo, the
entry for XU totally blew my mind".
ZA - Supposedly,
"za" is slang for "pizza". I can't find any documentation
for this aside from the Scrabble dictionary though, so I'm not even sure how
it's supposed to be pronounced (I prefer "zuh"). But whatever,
"za(s)" will serve you in good stead as a Scrabble word, much like
QI.
SPECIAL WORDS WITH FRIENDS ADDENDUM:
There are an additional four two-letter words in WWF that are considered valid
in that game, but that are not recognized in Scrabble. These words are DA, DI, FI,
and GI. "Da"
is possibly a shortened form of "dad". Less likely, it could be a
variant spelling of "dah", a word one uses when speaking Morse code
aloud (saying "dah" for the dashes and "dit" for the dots).
The latter hypothesis is less plausible to me since WWF does not accept
"das" as a word but does accept "dahs" and
"dits". A "gi" meanwhile is a karate or judo uniform-- it
is a Japanese loanword, pronounced with a hard G and long E sound, i.e. like
"ghee" (a word that means "buffalo butter"). I do not know
what "fi" or "di" are supposed to mean-- possibly they
could refer to do-re-mi semitones, but other semitones like "ri" are
still not valid in WWF. Probably they had some other meanings in mind for di
and fi, but I do not know for sure. If I had to guess, I might venture that
"fi" is back-formed from "re-fi" (short for
"refinance") or "hifi" (high fidelity, referring to audio
devices) or "wifi" (wireless internet), but I have never actually
heard or seen the word "fi" used by itself. As for "di", I
have no idea what they were thinking.
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