5-Letter Words Ending in Y
Y closes 906 five-letter words. It is the third most common ending, and the most misunderstood.
906 five-letter words end in Y, putting it behind only S and E. What sets it apart is that a terminal Y is almost always doing the work of a vowel, which changes how you should count the rest of the word.
A word like DUSTY looks to a strict reading like it holds one vowel. To the ear it holds two. If you are filtering by vowel count, a final Y is the single most common source of a wrong answer.
The -LY group
The largest cluster here ends in -LY: BADLY, DRYLY, ONLY's longer relatives. Adverbs formed from three-letter adjectives land in this length constantly, which is why L is by far the most likely letter in position four when Y closes the word.
If you have a confirmed Y at the end and L is still live, test it before anything else.
The -TY and -RY groups
After -LY, the two next largest are -TY and -RY. Between the three of them they account for most of this list, which means a confirmed final Y plus a ruled-out L, T and R collapses the field to something small enough to read.
That is an unusually sharp cut for two pieces of information, and it is why a final Y is worth more than its frequency suggests.
Words with no other vowel
A meaningful sub-group here contains no A, E, I, O or U at all (words like CRYPT's cousins, where Y is the only vowel sound present). Those are the words most players never think of, and they are exactly the ones that survive when a grid has ruled out every real vowel.
They also make a final Y a much better bet than it first appears when your vowels have all come back grey.
Reading the list
Scan with your browser's find function for a pattern you already have, or enter your full set of constraints into the solver, which applies fixed positions, required letters and exclusions to the whole list at once.
This page is for seeing the shape. The tool is for getting the answer.
About the list
Five-letter words ending in Y, from the standard 8,636-word list used across this site, including uncommon entries as well as everyday ones.
Position Four Is Where a Final Y Pays Off
A confirmed Y at the end is worth more than its frequency suggests, and the reason is entirely in position four. The distribution there is unusually top-heavy: L closes out 104 of these words, T closes 99, K closes 83, R closes 73, D closes 63, and E and N close 57 each.
Those six letters cover 479 of the 906, more than half the list. So a confirmed final Y plus a tested position four is one of the sharpest two-piece cuts available in a five-letter puzzle, and it is far more productive than testing position one, which is spread across the whole alphabet with S leading at only 82.
The order to test them in is L, then T, then K. That is not the same order you would guess from general English frequency, where K is uncommon, and it is exactly the kind of local pattern that beats general instinct. K appears in position four of 83 of these words, ahead of D, E, and N, because of the -CKY and -KY families: LUCKY, ROCKY, RISKY, MURKY, BULKY, SILKY, PESKY, HUSKY.
The Three Big Families
The -LY group is the largest at 104 words, and it is almost entirely adverbs built from short adjectives: BADLY, EARLY, DAILY, plus the harder ones where the base word is itself unusual. If you have a green Y at the end and L is still live, test it first.
The -TY group is next at 99, and it splits into two shapes. Numbers and quantities give you FIFTY, FORTY, EMPTY. Adjectives give you DIRTY, TASTY, NASTY, SALTY, DUSTY, PARTY. The -STY and -RTY sub-patterns are dense enough that confirming an S or R in position three after a T in four often finishes the puzzle.
The -RY group at 73 is the one built on doubled consonants: CARRY, MARRY, WORRY, SORRY. If you have a final Y and an R in position four and your single-consonant guesses keep failing, check for a doubled letter. Roughly a third of five-letter words repeat a letter, and this family is where a lot of them live.
The Vowel Trap
This is the part that costs people games. If you are filtering by vowel count, a terminal Y is the single most common source of a wrong answer, because Y at the end of a five-letter word is almost always doing a vowel's job to the ear while counting as a consonant on paper.
The numbers make the trap concrete. Of these 906 words, 648 contain exactly one of A, E, I, O, or U. Another 243 contain two, only 5 contain three, and 10 contain none at all. So a word ending in Y is overwhelmingly a one-vowel word by strict counting, and overwhelmingly a two-vowel word by sound.
The practical consequence: if a puzzle has ruled out several vowels and you are starting to feel stuck, a final Y is a much better bet than it looks. The word may only need one real vowel, and you may already have it.
The Ten Words With No Real Vowel At All
There are exactly ten five-letter words on this list containing none of A, E, I, O, or U: DRYLY, FLYBY, GYPSY, MYTHY, PYGMY, SHYLY, SLYLY, STYMY, THYMY, and WRYLY.
They are worth memorizing outright, because they are the answer to a very specific and very frustrating situation: every vowel you have tested has come back grey and you are convinced the puzzle is broken. It is not. Six of the ten end in -LY, two are doubled-Y words, and all of them lean on Y twice.
Notice how many contain two Ys. FLYBY, GYPSY, PYGMY, STYMY, THYMY, and MYTHY all do. If your vowels are all eliminated and you have a Y confirmed, the second Y is the guess most players never make.
Where a Final Y Actually Comes From
Understanding why the list looks the way it does makes the patterns stick. English uses terminal Y for three jobs, and each one produces a different word shape.
It builds adverbs from adjectives, which gives you the whole -LY family and explains why L dominates position four. It builds adjectives from nouns, which gives you DUSTY from dust, SALTY from salt, RISKY from risk, and explains the -TY and -KY clusters. And it forms diminutives and informal nouns, which is where a scattering of the odder entries come from.
Because these are all productive processes rather than fixed vocabulary, the list is unusually regular. That is good news for a solver: the words on this page follow rules, so once you have position four you can often generate the answer rather than recall it.
Working From What You Have
Scanning 906 words is not a plan. Use your browser's find function to search a fragment you have already confirmed, or put every constraint into the solver, which applies fixed positions, present letters, and exclusions to the full list in one pass.
Enter the greys as well as the greens and yellows. Eliminated letters usually cut the field harder than confirmed ones do, and skipping them is the most common way players leave the solver with more work than it needs.
If the results come back empty, one constraint is stricter than you meant. The usual cause is a letter marked absent that appears elsewhere in the answer, which happens whenever a guess used the same letter twice and only one copy came back coloured.