In the previous weeks, Scrabble blog posts have featured playable two-letter words beginning with the letters a through l. Today’s post features the playable two-letter words beginning with m, n, o, and p. Learning these two-letter words, as well as the other two-letter words in the alphabet, will enable you to see more options for play and increase the number of points you earn in a single turn.
M, by the way, is the most versatile consonant. In the first position, m pairs with every vowel: ma, me, mi, mo, mu, and also my. In the second position, m pairs with every vowel except i: am, em, om, um.
- ma: a mother
- me: a singular objective pronoun
- mi: a tone of the diatonic scale
- mm: an expression of assent
- mo: a moment
- mu: a Greek letter
- my: a first-person possessive adjective
- na: no, not
- ne: born with the name of (also nee)
- no: a negative answer
- nu: a Greek letter
- od: a hypothetical force
- oe: a whirlwind off the Faero Islands
- of: originating from
- oh: an exclamation of surprise
- oi: an expression of dismay (also oy)
- om: a sound used as a mantra
- on: the batsman’s side in cricket
- op: a style of abstract art dealing with optics
- or: the heraldic color gold
- os: a bone
- ow: used to express pain
- ox: a clumsy person
- oy: an expression of dismay (also oi)
- pa: a father
- pe: a Hebrew letter
- pi: a Greek letter
Don’t Go There (in Scrabble)
Occasionally, students will play oz, which isn’t one of the words in the list above. It’s absent from that list because it’s a proper noun that isn’t also a common noun.
That isn’t the case with the name of Dorothy’s aunt, Em, which is playable as the common noun em: the letter m and the width of a piece of type about as wide as it is tall, used as a unit of measure of typeset matter (hence the term em dash).
And if the letters on your rack spell emerald–the first word in the name of Oz’s capital city–and you can play them all in one turn, you will earn an extra fifty points for playing all seven of your letters. Ditto for cyclone and tornado, words for the storm that sends Dorothy on her journey, and woodman, the second word in her tin friend’s name.
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review your journal notes and the blog posts devoted to Scrabble.
Jane Lucas 