5 Letter Words Starting With C

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

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

A real example from our word list: the answer is CRUSH, and all you know is that it starts with C, which leaves 147 common words. Open with CRANE, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: CRANE C and R are green, and the rest are grey. That leaves 9 possible answers.

Guess 2: CRUST C, R, U and S are green, and the rest are grey. That leaves 1 possible answer.

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

What comes after C?

In common words that start with C, the second letter is most often H (22%), R (20%) and O (18%). Only 44% have a vowel second, so C is usually followed by another consonant.

About 5 letter words starting with C

C has two sounds at the start of a word. Before E, I or Y it usually sounds like S, as in civil, cycle and cease. Before A, O, U or a consonant it sounds like K: cabin, coast, crane. Sound doesn't matter in Wordle, but it helps when you're trying to think of words out loud. C also starts more consonant pairs than most letters: CH (chair, chest), CL (clean, cloud) and CR (crowd, crisp) are all common, so a C word without a vowel in the second spot is normal. Many C words end in -SE or -CE, like cause, chase and crime. If your guesses show C green in the first spot and nothing else, testing H, L and R next is usually the fastest way forward.

Only one letter start more 5 letter words than C.

Word families that start with C

CH and CR are the two biggest families of C words, with CO, CA and CL close behind. CH gives you chain, charm, chart, cheap, check and chief. CR gives you crack, craft, crash, crazy, cream and cross. CL adds claim, class, clear, click, cliff, climb and clock. Many C words end in -CK (check, chuck, click, clock, crack), which means C often appears twice. In Wordle, if C is green first and your guess shows another C as yellow, -CK at the end is a strong bet. C words are also good for Scrabble practice, since C is worth 3 points and pairs with high-value letters in crazy and comic. To check your guesses, try the Wordle solver.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with C

A is the most common vowel here, appearing in 41% of the common words, followed by E (40%) and O (36%). The least common is U (18%).

37% have just one vowel, like class, check, child and crazy. At the other end, cause, cease and cocoa have three or more.

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

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 98 nouns, 31 verbs and 16 adjectives.

Nouns include court, class and cause. Verbs include check, clear and cover. Adjectives include close, crazy and clean.

Best Wordle guesses that start with C

Top guesses, with the average number of the 147 common words each leaves: CRANE (8.2), CHORE (8.3), CLEAR (8.7), CORAL (8.9) and CAROL (9.5).

30% repeat a letter, and 15 have a double letter, like class, cross, carry and creek.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with C in Scrabble

Top common words: crazy (19), check (16) and chuck (16). All valid words: chizz (28), crazy (19) and cezve (19). 46 words reach 15 points or more.