5 Letter Words Starting With G

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

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

A real example from our word list: the answer is GUILT, and all you know is that it starts with G, which leaves 72 common words. Open with GLARE, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: GLARE G is green and L is yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 4 possible answers: guilt, guild, godly and gully.

Guess 2: GUILD G, U, I and L are green, and the rest are grey. That leaves 1 possible answer.

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

What comes after G?

In common words that start with G, the second letter is most often R (44%), L (15%) and U (13%). Only 38% have a vowel second, so G is usually followed by another consonant.

About 5 letter words starting with G

G can be soft before E, I or Y, as in giant and genre, and hard before A, O, U or a consonant, as in grape and guard. There are exceptions, like girls and geese, so sound is only a rough guide. GR is the most common pair at the start of G words: great, green, group, grant. GL (glass, globe) and GH (ghost) follow. GU is common too, often with a silent U, as in guess, guest and guide. If you know a Wordle answer starts with G and the second letter isn't R, try U next, because GU words are easy to forget.

G ranks 9th out of 26 as a first letter for 5 letter words.

Word families that start with G

GR is by far the largest family of G words: grace, grade, grain, grand, graph, grasp, grass, grave, greed, greet, grief, grill, grind, groom, gross, grove and grown. GL follows with glare, glide, gloom, glory, gloss and glove. The GU group often has a silent U, as in guard and guild. If G is green first and you haven't placed the second letter, R is the strongest guess by a wide margin. G words also have plenty of double letters: gloss, grass, gross, greed and greet. For a ranked list of the best opening words, see our Wordle starting word test.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with G

E is the most common vowel here, appearing in 46% of the common words, followed by A (40%) and O (32%). The least common is U (18%).

31% have just one vowel, like grand, glass, grant and grown. At the other end, guide, gauge and goose have three or more.

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 53 nouns, 10 verbs and 9 adjectives.

Nouns include going, group and green. Verbs include guess, grant and grasp. Adjectives include great, given and grand.

Best Wordle guesses that start with G

Top guesses, with the average number of the 72 common words each leaves: GLARE (4.3), GRADE (4.4), GRATE (4.8), GREAT (5.5) and GRAPE (5.8).

33% repeat a letter, and 19 have a double letter, like guess, green, glass and gross.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with G in Scrabble

Top common words: glaze (15), graze (15) and gabby (13). All valid words: ghazi (18), gauzy (18) and gyoza (18). 25 words reach 15 points or more.