Letter Frequency in English Words
Computed from all 168,548 words (1,497,509 letters) in the public-domain ENABLE dictionary. The most common letter is E (11.5% of all letters); the rarest is J (0.16%).
All 26 letters, ranked by frequency
| Rank | Letter | Occurrences | % of all letters | % of words containing it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | e | 172,834 | 11.5% | 69.6% |
| 2 | s | 141,998 | 9.5% | 59.6% |
| 3 | i | 133,288 | 8.9% | 58.3% |
| 4 | a | 113,746 | 7.6% | 53.7% |
| 5 | r | 106,376 | 7.1% | 51.9% |
| 6 | n | 101,628 | 6.8% | 47.9% |
| 7 | t | 99,036 | 6.6% | 47.3% |
| 8 | o | 97,594 | 6.5% | 45.1% |
| 9 | l | 79,705 | 5.3% | 39.1% |
| 10 | c | 60,849 | 4.1% | 31.3% |
| 11 | d | 51,769 | 3.5% | 27.2% |
| 12 | u | 49,278 | 3.3% | 26.6% |
| 13 | p | 43,790 | 2.9% | 23.0% |
| 14 | m | 42,439 | 2.8% | 22.6% |
| 15 | g | 41,210 | 2.8% | 22.0% |
| 16 | h | 34,649 | 2.3% | 19.0% |
| 17 | b | 27,975 | 1.9% | 15.3% |
| 18 | y | 24,444 | 1.6% | 13.9% |
| 19 | f | 18,857 | 1.3% | 10.0% |
| 20 | v | 14,699 | 1.0% | 8.4% |
| 21 | k | 13,261 | 0.9% | 7.5% |
| 22 | w | 11,637 | 0.8% | 6.6% |
| 23 | z | 7,038 | 0.5% | 3.9% |
| 24 | x | 4,468 | 0.3% | 2.6% |
| 25 | q | 2,479 | 0.2% | 1.5% |
| 26 | j | 2,462 | 0.2% | 1.4% |
Source: ENABLE public-domain tournament dictionary. Each word counted once; occurrences include repeated letters within a word.
Letter frequency by position in 5-letter words
For Wordle players, position matters as much as overall frequency. These are the most common letters in each of the five positions across all 5-letter words:
| Position | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th most common |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Letter 1 | s (12.2%) | c (7.7%) | b (6.8%) | p (6.5%) | t (6.3%) |
| Letter 2 | a (17.1%) | o (15.5%) | e (12.3%) | i (11.2%) | u (9.2%) |
| Letter 3 | a (9.8%) | r (9.2%) | i (8.6%) | o (7.8%) | n (7.3%) |
| Letter 4 | e (19.7%) | a (7.6%) | t (7.2%) | i (6.7%) | l (6.2%) |
| Letter 5 | s (31.2%) | e (10.8%) | y (10.5%) | d (6.7%) | r (6.1%) |
Percentages are the share of all 5-letter words with that letter in that position.
Use these stats
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common letter in English words?
E is the most common letter in English dictionary words. It accounts for 11.5% of all letters and appears in 69.6% of the 168,548 words in the ENABLE dictionary. The next most common letters are S (9.5%) and I (8.9%).
What is the least common letter in English words?
J is the rarest letter in English dictionary words, making up just 0.16% of all letters and appearing in only 1.4% of words.
Is dictionary letter frequency different from letter frequency in normal text?
Yes. In running text (books, articles), extremely common short words like 'the' and 'and' push letters such as T and H higher — the classic text-corpus order begins E, T, A, O, I, N. Dictionary frequency counts each word once, so it reflects the alphabet's role in vocabulary rather than in everyday sentences. Both orders agree that E is first.
How were these statistics calculated?
We counted every letter in all 168,548 words (1,497,509 letters in total) of the public-domain ENABLE tournament dictionary — the same word list used by our solvers and word games like Scrabble and Words With Friends.