Word of the Day

Boost Your Scores in Scrabble,
Words With Friends, & More!

There are plenty of Word of the Day services scattered around the Web, and you'd be right to ask why I would go to all the trouble of creating another one. First, let me show you an example...

The answer is that Word Buff's Word of the Day is dedicated to lovers of word games and puzzles and therefore concentrates on words you are likely to find most useful in those pursuits.

Since many of you have a soft spot for Scrabble, and since many games use a Scrabble Dictionary, or something very close to it, as a word reference, I take most of my words from that source too.

As a matter of fact, most of the unusual words you'll learn are also allowed in Words With Friends, Lexulous, Text Twist, and many other popular word games.

NOTE -- If you're a Word Buff member/subscriber you won't automatically receive my word of the day, because I don't want to annoy people who signed up expecting no more than a few emails a month.

Facebook and Twitter

Almost a quarter of the world's population is now on Facebook! Basically, it's the place to chat about stuff. So I've set up a Word Buff Facebook page for that purpose.

To start receiving my word of the day in your Facebook newsfeed, all you have to do is click the 'Like' button below...

Alternatively, you can pop on over to Word Buff on Facebook now and have a browse. But remember to click the 'Like' button when you get there if you want to receive my updates in your Facebook newsfeed (see the red arrow in the picture below)...

If you're a Twitter fan, I'm sure you'll agree that this is the perfect place for small soundbites of information (like daily words!).

If you have a Twitter account, the quickest way is to just click the following link, and remember to click the big Follow button when you get there.

Follow @Word_Buff

If you don't remember to click Follow, my daily word tweets won't end up in your Twitter stream!

Not a Twitter User?

Now's a good time to experiment with it! It takes just a few seconds to sign up here. As soon as you start following people you'll start receiving their tweets. If you don't find them interesting or helpful, you can unfollow them with a single click!

What Exactly is a Scrabble Word?

If you're here to resolve a Scrabble dispute in a hurry, here is a handy Scrabble word checker. Just type your word into the space provided and click CHECK.

When you're done, I'll tell you more about why certain words are allowed in Scrabble and others aren't...

There are lots of misconceptions out there about which words are acceptable in Scrabble. Many people think slang words are illegal, for example, when in fact there is no such rule.

Here is a brief list of the guidelines used for deciding whether or not a word is valid in Scrabble...

• Words that start with a capital letter are not allowed
• Abbreviations are not allowed
• Prefixes and suffixes are not allowed
• Words requiring apostrophes or hyphens are not allowed
• Slang and offensive words are allowed
• Foreign words that have been absorbed into English are allowed

This list of rules probably clarifies some things for you, but it might still leave you with difficult questions like these...

• Which dictionary should I use?
• What if a derived word, like a plural, isn't explicitly listed?
• How do I know if a foreign word has been absorbed into English?

Now I could write an essay attempting to answer these questions for you, but you can be sure this would lead to further nasty questions. Dictionaries just aren't the neat and tidy things we'd like them to be!

Fortunately, people who are really serious about Scrabble have solved this problem for you. In short their solution was this: leave it to the experts. What do I mean by that?

Well, the people who are really best suited to deciding if a word is acceptable or not are the dictionary makers, known more fancily as lexicographers.

So what the Scrabble community did a long time ago was to ask a panel of professional lexicographers to go through the dictionary and determine a precise list of allowable words.

This list would make every single form of a word explicit, so that no room could be left for disputes. A word is either in the list, or it isn't. Black and white. No questions.

Scrabble bliss!