5 Letter Words Starting With O

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

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

A real example from our word list: the answer is OUTER, and all you know is that it starts with O, which leaves 28 common words. Open with ONSET, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: ONSET O and E are green and T is yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 3 possible answers: other, outer and otter.

Guess 2: OTHER O, E and R are green and T is yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 1 possible answer.

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

What comes after O?

In common words that start with O, the second letter is most often R (11%), P (11%) and T (7%). Only 14% have a vowel second, so O is usually followed by another consonant.

About 5 letter words starting with O

O is not a common first letter, and the O list is short. Many O words begin with O plus a consonant pair: OF (offer, often), OR (order, organ, orbit) and OU (ounce, outer). Several are built on OUT, like outer, outdo and outgo. O words also show up a lot in science and nature, as in ocean, olive, onion, otter and ozone. In Wordle, an O that comes back yellow in your first guess is more likely to belong in the second or third spot, so only move it to the front when those are ruled out.

O ranks 18 out of 26 as a first letter for 5 letter words.

Word families that start with O

O words are a small group with a few clear families. OUT words include outer and outdo. OR words include orbit and order. OF words include offer and often. A nature group is worth remembering too: ocean and olive. Many O words end in -ER, like older, other and owner, so if O is green first, testing E and R at the end is a good next move. O words are popular in crosswords because they start with a vowel, which makes them easy to cross with other answers. For words where O sits in the middle, which is far more common, see 5 letter words with O.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with O

O is the most common vowel here, appearing in 100% of the common words, followed by E (71%) and I (29%). The least common is U (14%).

4% have just one vowel, like oddly. At the other end, ocean, opera and outer have three or more.

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 16 nouns, 8 adjectives, 2 verbs and 2 adverbs.

Nouns include order, owner and ocean. Adjectives include other, older and owned. Verbs include offer and occur. Adverbs include often and oddly.

Best Wordle guesses that start with O

Top guesses, with the average number of the 28 common words each leaves: ONSET (2.6), OFTEN (2.6), OUTER (2.8), OLDER (3.1) and OVERT (3.1).

32% repeat a letter, and 4 have a double letter, like offer, occur, oddly and otter.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with O in Scrabble

Top common words: ozone (14), oxide (13) and offer (11). All valid words: ozzie (23), ozeki (18) and oxbow (17). 5 words reach 15 points or more.