5 Letter Words Starting With U

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

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

A real example from our word list: the answer is UTTER, and all you know is that it starts with U, which leaves 21 common words. Open with UNITE, the guess that splits this set most evenly.

Guess 1: UNITE U is green and T and E are yellow, and the rest are grey. That leaves 2 possible answers: upset and utter.

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

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

What comes after U?

In common words that start with U, the second letter is most often N (48%), S (19%) and P (10%). Only 0% have a vowel second, so U is usually followed by another consonant.

About 5 letter words starting with U

Many U words begin with UN, sometimes meaning "not", like unfit, untie and unzip. Others use UP, UR or US, as in upper, urban and usual. At the start of a word, U can sound like "you" (unite, usual) or "uh" (under, upset). U is a rare first letter, so the common list is short, and in Wordle a U that comes back yellow is much more likely to belong in the second or fourth spot than the first.

U ranks 21 out of 26 as a first letter for 5 letter words.

Word families that start with U

U words are a short list, and about half begin with UN. That group includes uncle, uncut, undue, unify, union and unity. The rest include ulcer, ultra, usage, usher and utter. Many end in -ER, like under and utter, or -AL, like usual. In Wordle, a U at the start is rare enough that it's worth considering only when your other clues point to it. When they do, testing N in the second spot covers almost half the list in one guess. For words where U sits in the middle, which is much more common, see 5 letter words with U.

Vowels in 5 letter words starting with U

U is the most common vowel here, appearing in 100% of the common words, followed by E (52%) and I (38%). The least common is O (5%).

Nouns, verbs and adjectives

By main meaning (WordNet), there are 8 adjectives, 7 nouns and 5 verbs. Adjectives outnumber nouns here, which is unusual.

Adjectives include under, upper and urban. Nouns include using, union and uncle. Verbs include upset, unite and utter.

Best Wordle guesses that start with U

Top guesses, with the average number of the 21 common words each leaves: UNITE (1.7), UNTIL (1.7), URINE (2.0), UPSET (2.1) and UNCLE (2.4).

29% repeat a letter, and 2 have a double letter, like upper and utter.

Highest-scoring 5 letter words starting with U in Scrabble

Top common words: unify (11), upper (9) and unity (8). All valid words: unzip (16), umiaq (16) and unfix (15). 3 words reach 15 points or more.