5 Letter Words Starting With H

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

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

A real example from our word list: the answer is HOBBY, and all you know is that it starts with H, which leaves 60 common words. Open with HATER, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: HATER H is green, and the rest are grey. That leaves 11 possible answers.

Guess 2: HOUND H and O are green, and the rest are grey. That leaves 2 possible answers: hobby and holly.

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

What comes after H?

In common words that start with H, the second letter is most often A (30%), O (23%) and E (20%). 98% 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 H

H is silent at the start of a few words, such as honor and hours, but in most H words it's sounded. Almost every H word has a vowel in the second spot: happy, heart, hotel, human. The main exception is HY, as in hyena and hymns. That makes H words easy to narrow down in Wordle: once H is green in the first spot, testing A, O and U in the second spot usually settles the vowel in one guess. Several common H words end in -RY or -NY, like hurry, hairy and honey, so Y at the end is worth testing too.

H ranks 13 out of 26 as a first letter for 5 letter words.

Word families that start with H

H words almost always have a vowel second, which makes them some of the easiest to narrow down. HA words include habit, handy, harsh, haste and haunt. HO words include hobby, horse, hound and house. HU words include humid, humor and husky. Endings tell you a lot: -CH (hatch, hitch, hunch, hutch), -DY (handy, hardy) and -RY (hairy, hurry). Many H words are everyday words, so they turn up often in Wordle. Try one of these when H is green first and you need to find the vowel. For words that end in H, which mostly end in CH, SH or TH, see 5 letter words ending in H.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with H

E is the most common vowel here, appearing in 45% of the common words, followed by A (43%) and O (32%). The least common is U (20%).

33% have just one vowel, like happy, harsh, hurry and handy. At the other end, house and haiku have three or more.

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 37 nouns, 16 adjectives, 6 verbs and 1 adverb.

Nouns include house, heart and hotel. Adjectives include happy, human and heard. Verbs include hatch, haunt and hitch. Adverbs include hence.

Best Wordle guesses that start with H

Top guesses, with the average number of the 60 common words each leaves: HATER (4.2), HEART (4.4), HATED (4.6), HONEY (5.2) and HAIRY (5.2).

32% repeat a letter, and 9 have a double letter, like happy, hello, hurry and hobby.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with H in Scrabble

Top common words: hazel (17), hijab (17) and hertz (17). All valid words: huzzy (29), huzza (26) and hajji (22). 58 words reach 15 points or more.