5 Letter Words Starting With P

How to find a five-letter word that starts with a P

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

A real example from our word list: the answer is PAUSE, and all you know is that it starts with P, which leaves 108 common words. Open with POISE, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: POISE P, S and E are green, and the rest are grey. That leaves 4 possible answers: phase, pulse, pause and purse.

Guess 2: PULSE P, S and E are green and U is yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 1 possible answer.

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

What comes after P?

In common words that start with P, the second letter is most often A (20%), R (17%) and I (15%). 67% 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 P

P is one of the most common first letters for 5 letter words. PL and PR are the main pairs: place, plant, price, proud. PH sounds like F, as in phone, photo and phase, and in PS words the P is silent, as in psalm. That variety means a P word can have almost any letter second, so in Wordle it pays to test L, R and H early once P is green. P words ending in -CH or -SE are common too, like pitch, punch and pause.

P ranks fourth out of 26 as a first letter for 5 letter words.

Word families that start with P

P words have more variety than most letters. PR words include pride, prime, print, prior, prize, probe and proof. PL words include plain, plane, plate and plaza. PH words include phase and phone. With a vowel second, there are paint, panel, paper, party, peace, piano, piece, pilot, pizza, point, power and pupil. Endings to remember are -CH (patch, peach, pinch, pitch, porch, punch) and -SE (pause, pulse, purse). P is worth 3 points in Scrabble, and words with a double P, like puppy, score especially well. Compare with 5 letter words ending in P, which mostly end in -MP or -EP.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with P

E is the most common vowel here, appearing in 44% of the common words, followed by A (41%) and I (32%). The least common is U (17%).

33% have just one vowel, like party, press, plant and print. At the other end, piece, peace and piano have three or more.

A few have no A, E, I, O or U at all, because Y does the vowel's job: psych and pygmy.

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 76 nouns, 18 adjectives and 14 verbs.

Nouns include place, point and power. Adjectives include prior, prime and proud. Verbs include press, plant and prove.

Best Wordle guesses that start with P

Top guesses, with the average number of the 108 common words each leaves: POISE (7.9), PERIL (8.2), PLANE (8.6), PAYER (8.8) and PRONE (9.0).

29% repeat a letter, and 14 have a double letter, like press, proof, pizza and penny.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with P in Scrabble

Top common words: pizza (25), proxy (17) and prize (16). All valid words: pzazz (34), pozzy (28) and pizza (25). 35 words reach 15 points or more.