5 Letter Words Starting With N

How to find a five-letter word that starts with an N

Looking for 5 letter words that start with N to solve a Wordle? The finder above already has N in the first green box; add your other clues.

A real example from our word list: the answer is NINTH, and all you know is that it starts with N, which leaves 33 common words. Open with NOISE, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: NOISE N is green and I is yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 4 possible answers: night, ninth, ninja and nifty.

Guess 2: NIGHT N and I are green and H and T are yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 1 possible answer.

Guess 3: NINTH All five letters are green. Solved in 3.

What comes after N?

In common words that start with N, the second letter is most often O (27%), A (27%) and I (18%). 97% have a vowel second, so if your consonant guesses keep missing, try A, E, I, O or U in the second spot.

About 5 letter words starting with N

N words almost always continue with a vowel: never, night, noble, nurse. Because there are no common N + consonant openings in English, the second letter in an N word is nearly always A, E, I, O or U. Several N words double a letter, like nanny, nippy and nutty, and a few contain N twice, as in ninth and ninja. In Wordle, once N is placed first, a guess that tests O, I and E in the second spot narrows things down quickly.

N ranks 16 out of 26 as a first letter for 5 letter words.

Word families that start with N

N words almost always continue with a vowel. NA words include naked, named, nasty and naval. NE and NI words include nerve, newly, niche and niece. NO and NU words include noise, north, noted and novel. Many N words end in -TH or -TY, as in north and nasty, which makes T a strong letter to test once N is placed. N also often appears twice, as in nanny and ninja. Because N is one of the most common consonants overall, an N that comes back yellow is more likely to belong in the middle or at the end. See 5 letter words with N for those patterns.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with N

E is the most common vowel here, appearing in 52% of the common words, followed by A (33%) and O (33%). The least common is U (12%).

30% have just one vowel, like night, north, newly and nasty. At the other end, noise, niece and naive have three or more.

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 17 nouns, 12 adjectives, 2 adverbs and 1 verb.

Nouns include night, north and novel. Adjectives include noted, naked and naval. Adverbs include never and newly. Verbs include nudge.

Best Wordle guesses that start with N

Top guesses, with the average number of the 33 common words each leaves: NOISE (2.8), NAIVE (3.1), NOTED (3.3), NASTY (3.5) and NOSED (3.7).

36% repeat a letter, and 3 have a double letter, like nanny, needy and nutty.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with N in Scrabble

Top common words: ninja (12), nexus (12) and newly (11). All valid words: nudzh (18), nizam (16) and niqab (16). 4 words reach 15 points or more.