Two-letter words are the working tools of tile games. They let you play alongside a word already on the board, scoring in two directions at once, and they turn racks that look unplayable (all vowels, or none) into ordinary turns. This page lists every two-letter word in the word list this site's tools use, the public-domain ENABLE list: 96 words, each with its tile score in the standard English set and a short meaning. One warning belongs at the top, and it is repeated in the questions below: the official Scrabble tournament lists are not this list. They include QI and ZA. ENABLE does not, and never has. It does not have OI either.
Tournament lists differ. The official North American list (the NASPA Word List, NWL2020) accepts 107 two-letter words, including QI and ZA, which are not in ENABLE: scrabbleplayers.org/w/NWL2020. If you are preparing for tournament play, learn that list, not this one.
The complete list
| Word | Tile score | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| AA | 2 | Rough, cindery lava |
| AB | 4 | An abdominal muscle (informal) |
| AD | 3 | An advertisement |
| AE | 2 | One (in Scots) |
| AG | 3 | To do with agriculture |
| AH | 5 | An expression of surprise or pleasure |
| AI | 2 | A three-toed sloth |
| AL | 2 | An East Indian tree, the Indian mulberry |
| AM | 4 | A form of the verb be |
| AN | 2 | An indefinite article, used before vowel sounds |
| AR | 2 | The letter R |
| AS | 2 | To the same degree; also, an ancient Roman coin |
| AT | 2 | In the position of; at a place or time |
| AW | 5 | An expression of protest or sympathy |
| AX | 9 | A tool for chopping wood |
| AY | 5 | Yes; an affirmative vote |
| BA | 4 | The eternal soul, in Egyptian belief |
| BE | 4 | To exist; to happen |
| BI | 4 | A bisexual person (informal) |
| BO | 4 | A friend or fellow (slang) |
| BY | 7 | Beside; past; not later than |
| DE | 3 | Of or from, used in names and places |
| DO | 3 | The first note of the musical scale; also, to perform |
| ED | 3 | Education (informal) |
| EF | 5 | The letter F |
| EH | 5 | An expression asking for agreement or repetition |
| EL | 2 | An elevated railway |
| EM | 4 | The letter M; a measure in printing |
| EN | 2 | The letter N; half of an em in printing |
| ER | 2 | A sound of hesitation |
| ES | 2 | The letter S |
| ET | 2 | Ate (in dialect); and, in Latin phrases |
| EX | 9 | A former partner; also, the letter X |
| FA | 5 | The fourth note of the musical scale |
| GO | 3 | To move or travel; also, a Japanese board game |
| HA | 5 | An expression of laughter or triumph |
| HE | 5 | A male person or animal |
| HI | 5 | A greeting |
| HM | 7 | A sound of thinking or doubt |
| HO | 5 | A shout to attract attention |
| ID | 3 | The part of the mind driven by instinct, in Freudian theory |
| IF | 5 | A condition or possibility |
| IN | 2 | Inside; within |
| IS | 2 | The third-person form of the verb be |
| IT | 2 | The thing that has been mentioned |
| JO | 9 | A sweetheart (in Scots) |
| KA | 6 | The spiritual self or soul, in Egyptian belief |
| LA | 2 | The sixth note of the musical scale |
| LI | 2 | A Chinese unit of distance, about half a kilometre |
| LO | 2 | Look! (an old expression) |
| MA | 4 | A mother (informal) |
| ME | 4 | The person speaking, as the object of a verb |
| MI | 4 | The third note of the musical scale |
| MM | 6 | A sound of pleasure or agreement |
| MO | 4 | A moment, as in 'half a mo' |
| MU | 4 | The twelfth letter of the Greek alphabet |
| MY | 7 | Belonging to the person speaking |
| NA | 2 | No, or not (in Scots) |
| NE | 2 | Born with the name of, used before an original surname |
| NO | 2 | A negative answer or vote |
| NU | 2 | The thirteenth letter of the Greek alphabet |
| OD | 3 | A hypothetical force once thought to run through nature |
| OE | 2 | A whirlwind off the Faroe Islands |
| OF | 5 | Belonging to; coming from |
| OH | 5 | An expression of surprise or pain |
| OM | 4 | A sacred sound used in Hindu prayer and meditation |
| ON | 2 | In operation; taking place |
| OP | 4 | A style of abstract art based on optical effects |
| OR | 2 | Otherwise; also, the heraldic colour gold |
| OS | 2 | A bone; also, a mouthlike opening |
| OW | 5 | An expression of sudden pain |
| OX | 9 | A large castrated bull used for farm work |
| OY | 5 | An expression of dismay or alarm |
| PA | 4 | A father (informal) |
| PE | 4 | The seventeenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet |
| PI | 4 | The sixteenth letter of the Greek alphabet; the ratio 3.1416… |
| RE | 2 | The second note of the musical scale |
| SH | 5 | A call for silence |
| SI | 2 | The seventh note of the musical scale, also called ti |
| SO | 2 | The fifth note of the musical scale; in this way |
| TA | 2 | Thanks (British, informal) |
| TI | 2 | The seventh note of the musical scale |
| TO | 2 | Toward; as far as |
| UH | 5 | A sound of hesitation |
| UM | 4 | A sound of hesitation or doubt |
| UN | 2 | One (in dialect) |
| UP | 4 | To raise; in a higher position |
| US | 2 | The speaker and others, as the object of a verb |
| UT | 2 | The first note of the musical scale in the old system, now usually called do |
| WE | 5 | The speaker and others |
| WO | 5 | Grief or woe (an old spelling) |
| XI | 9 | The fourteenth letter of the Greek alphabet |
| XU | 9 | A former unit of money in Vietnam, a hundredth of a dong |
| YA | 5 | You (informal) |
| YE | 5 | You (in old-fashioned language) |
| YO | 5 | A greeting, or a call for attention |
Reading the list: four patterns
The letters C, Q, V and Z start nothing. No two-letter word in this list begins with them, and none contains a Q or a Z anywhere. That is the practical cost of the missing QI and ZA: in this list, the two 10-point tiles can never be set down as a two-letter word, so they need a longer play or a hook into an existing word.
A and O do the heavy lifting. Sixteen words begin with A and twelve with O; add the ten beginning with E and the three starter letters A, O, E account for 38 of the 96. That mirrors the language. A rack stuck with vowels is stuck with the most cooperative letters there are.
Four words are nothing but vowels (AA, AE, AI, OE), and five have no vowel at all (BY, HM, MM, MY, SH, where Y and the H sounds do the work). Between them, those nine words are the emergency exits at both ends of a rack. A player who knows only these nine already handles most two-letter situations.
The top score is 9, and six words share it. AX, EX, JO, OX, XI and XU each pair an 8-point tile with a 1-point vowel. After them come BY, HM and MY at 7. Base scores mislead, though: a two-letter word earns its keep through the second word it forms across the board, and through premium squares, not through its own two tiles.
How the words are actually used
The standard play is the parallel: lay both tiles alongside an existing word so your two letters form a word down and each tile also completes a short word across. One turn, three scores. The second use is the hook: words like AX, EX and OX extend at the front or end of a longer word (an S on the end of most of them is another word again), and their one-letter extensions are why experienced players hold an X or a J for a turn longer than beginners think wise. The third use is the one beginners need first: dumping. Two vowels through AA or OE, or two consonants through SH or HM, rebalances a rack so the next draw has somewhere to go.
To find longer plays from any pair of letters, or to check a word the table does not settle, the Word Unscrambler searches this same list in full, and the anagram guide covers the hand method for working a rack without one.
Learning them: four groups worth knowing cold
Ninety-six words is a weekend of flashcards, but the list is not flat. It falls into groups that share a job, and the groups are easier to hold than the alphabet is. Nine are musical notes: DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI and SI, with UT, the old name for the first note, beside them. Four are Greek letters (MU, NU, PI, XI) and seven are simply the names of English letters (AR, EF, EL, EM, EN, ER, ES), which means you already know what they sound like; you only had to learn that they count. Fifteen are pure sounds a person makes: AH, AW, EH, ER, HA, HI, HM, HO, OH, OW, OY, SH, UH, UM and YO. Learn those four groups, 35 words, and the emergencies are covered. What remains is mostly small working words (AT, BY, IN, ON, TO, OF) that nobody needs to memorise because they have been using them all their lives without noticing they were plays.
Questions
Are these words valid in official Scrabble tournaments?
Not by this page's authority. This is the ENABLE list, a public-domain word list compiled from public sources. The official tournament lists are copyrighted, are maintained by their owners, and differ from this one in both directions. Most famously, they include QI and ZA, and ENABLE has never contained either. Use this table to learn what two-letter words look like and how they play. For a ruling in a rated game, the official list for your region is the only source that counts.
Which two-letter word scores the most?
On tile values alone, six words tie at 9 points: AX, EX, JO, OX, XI and XU, each pairing an 8-point letter with a 1-point vowel. Nothing in this list scores 10 or 11, because no two-letter word here contains a Q or a Z. In a real game the premium squares matter more than the base score, and a 2-point word laid across a triple word square outscores a 9-point word on plain tiles.
Why are there only 96 words when other lists have more?
Because the lists were built from different dictionaries. ENABLE was assembled from public-domain sources and stopped where those sources stopped; the official lists were drawn from standard dictionaries and have been revised since, adding words like QI as editors accepted them. A list is a snapshot of the dictionary behind it. This site's tools all use ENABLE, so this table matches exactly what the tools will find for you.
Which two-letter words should I learn first?
The ones that rescue bad racks. Start with the vowel pairs AA, AE, AI and OE, which spend two vowels at once; the no-vowel set BY, HM, MM, MY and SH, which spend none; and the letter names EF, EL, EM, EN, ER and ES, which turn a single awkward letter plus almost any partner into a play. Those fifteen or so cover most of the emergencies a rack can produce.
Sources
- ENABLE word list (public domain): the 96 words are the complete contents of the list's two-letter file, counted and reproduced in full: github.com/brokensandals/wordlists
- Meanings are short standard dictionary senses for the words as they are used in word games. For initialisms this short (AG, ED, OP), a large dictionary's first-listed sense is often an abbreviation's expansion rather than the playing sense, so the senses here were written and cross-checked against published two-letter word references.
- Tile scores use the standard English tile-game values. The full checking method is on How We Verify. List verified 28 October 2026.
Update log
28 October 2026: published, with the table generated directly from the shipped two-letter word file so the page and the tools cannot drift apart.