Why Is The Scrabble Dictionary SO WEIRD? 

Qello

you could even shorten it to qi!

Maybe QT as in "cutie" needs to get in!

@@wanderer15 If Za is legal, QT should be legal.

Someday, we will make Quone a real word

Oh my god, I thought "ab" was the biggest whopper. I missed those on first watch, that's amazing.

Also some onomatopia like eh

​@@rennoc6478i can see "eh" being debatable because its not exactly a word with a set definition, rather just a noise that we make. "or" and "we" are literally words with definitions in the English language that are also extremely common in everyday talk, so people saying it's not a word is hilarious

@@agitated_cat eh, used to represent a sound made in speech in a variety of situations, in particular to ask for something to be repeated or explained or to elicit agreement. That being put aside I do see your point

@@agitated_cateh does have a set definition. Onomatopoeia is different in different languages

You'd probably only be able to play that word in a tournament. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary that you can buy in stores omits words they have deemed offensive, i.e. racist, scatalogical, etc. Most online/app versions of Scrabble will be in line with that. However in tournament play, anything goes.

@@pjet8042Not that this would likely happen because of the distribution of tiles and optimal play, but could you imagine if someone won a tournament by playing the N word as their final move?

@@MewtwoStruckBack - hopefully they'd be able to play GINGER instead...

@@pjet8042 But what would be the fun in that? It’d be for the shock value

@@pjet8042 Although unlikely There are certain layouts that allow one rather than the other. I'll provide a hypothetical clean board example only relying on one word. Nig, and Gin. Nig meaning to dress (stone) with a sharp-pointed hammer and gin being alcohol. So, it is possible for someone to be forced to play an offensive word, because of the current state of the board. TBF, I'd probably just take the L on that one.

Oh my god, I could make it an all-day event if I needed to

in north american scrabble: aa: a type of lava distinguished as being very rough and uneven ab: short for the abdominal muscle ad: short for advertisement ae: archaic version of a/an ag: short for agriculture ah: a sigh or exclamation ai: a three-toed sloth al: a tree in east india am: first person singular of "to be" an: one of something ar: the letter R as: to compare something at: to be somewhere aw: disappointment ax: an axe ay: archaic form of "aye" ba: the soul in egyptian mythology be: to, well, be bi: short for bisexual bo: a pal by: to be responsible for/the cause of something da: short for dad de: of/from (in a name) such as Charles de Gaulle do: to make something happen ed: short for education ef: the letter F eh: an exclamation el: short for an elevated train em: the letter M en: the letter N er: an exclamation of hesitation or confusion es: the letter S et: archaic past tense of eat ew: exclamation of disgust ex: to cross out/a previous relationship fa: the fourth note of a music scale fe: a hebrew letter gi: a suit worn for martial arts go: to move somewhere or start doing something/a board game ha: an exclamation of surprise or triumph/laughter he: referring to a male hi: greeting ho: an exclamation of surprise id: the instinctual, impulsive part of your psyche if: a conditional/possibility in: to be within something is: singular third person of (to be) it: referring to an inanimate object jo: a sweetheart ka: the spiritual self of a human in egyptian mythology ki: alternate spelling of qi la: to sing/the sixth note on a musical scale li: a chinese unit of distance lo: an exclamation of surprise or to attract attention ma: short for mother me: first person singular mi: third note on a musical scale mm: an exclamation of acknowledgement or satisfaction mo: short for a moment mu: a letter of the greek alphabet my: posessive singular na: slang for no ne: name born with no: negative nu: a letter of the greek alphabet od: a hypothetical force of natural power oe: a whirlwind from the faroe islands of: coming from oh: an exclamation of surprise oi: an exclamation for attention ok: confirmation om: a mantra on: above op: abstract art or: otherwise os: a bone ow: an exclamation of pain ox: an animal oy: an exclamation pa: father pe: a letter of the hebrew alphabet pi: a letter of the greek alphabet po: a chamber pot qi: vital force of life in chinese mythology re: second tone of a musical scale sh: used to urge silence si: alternative seventh tone on a musical scale so: a conjunction; therefore ta: an expression of gratitude te: i have no idea but it's in the dictionary ti: seventh tone on a musical scale to: in the direction of uh: expression of hesitation um: expression of hesitation un: archaic form of "an" or "one" up: above/to raise us: we ut: also no idea why but this is valid too we: us wo: woe xi: a letter of the greek alphabet xu: a monetary unit in vietnam ya: short for yeah/an asian pear ye: archaic form of you yo: an exclamation to call attention to za: pizza

Yours is a truly ginormous idea!

"te" and "ut" are more obscure ones in the do-re-mi set, "te" being the flat seventh and "ut" being another "do" (it was originally ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la but there were obvious problems with one of them having a consonant at the back) also you forgot "hm"

hey man, "or" isn't a word

The official scrabble dictionary: 100,000 words. North American tournament Word list: 190,000 words. Collins Scrabble words: 280,000 words. Oxford English Dictionary: 1,000,000 words, at least 600,000 of which would make it into scrabble without question. It would be a radically different game!

​@@nagcopaleen9078 How is it that the North American tournament word list has more words than the official Scrabble dictionary?

It’s because the Americans wouldn’t be able to misspell “colour” anymore.

@@aspuzlingthe official list only includes entries with base words up to 8 letters. Whereas, the tournament list includes words up to 15 letters. Also, a few trademarks in wide use (like jello) and curse words are added to the tournament dictionary.

Excellent points!

"za" seems to be more of a slang version of pizza. It really depends on what you call a word, but I would argue if "za" counts as word, so should for example "gud" (short for "good" as in "git gud"), "ez" ( short for "easy" as in "2ez" or "ez pz") or even just "lol".

​@@bultvidxxxix9973 If your examples would show up in a dictionary, than they probably would be added to scrabble in the future and perfectly legal to play

Scrabble should make all words less than 8 letters illegal to play.

​@@reginaldforthright805 ikr that would make the game so much better! Nobody would even be able to start a Scrabble game, which imo is better for the whole world

Holy hell

lol wtf

You're a chess player, aren't you ? :P

Fpar telpua seln, otnf hc ms. (That sounds good, count me up.) Made a generator for it, maybe I could try to get relations between letters in scrabble dictionary to make it sound more English while keeping it random, but as pure Fisher Scrabble this works. (Yitd o voiuiueae reg ew, tnnfi L enydt eia rs ade aeeieeige riuuawi ptmsair ew vnsgsism nmiecyadoe ko aiau ew eaaia csst Cwyasau accev daleici ew sfalcn, bri dr rkss Oceltu Oshasteo woun yesll.)

@@louisraphael1727 New comment just dropped

excellent thankyou!

Amazing information, thank you

Looks like the dictionary commitee fúka upp that one

It feels like "oe" should just be the English name for the letter ø (very uniformed opinion).

@@eliasmochan correct, that is how the nordic languages typically "anglify" the letters ø and ö.

Right, a word is a word because people needed a way to describe something. A word is only strange because a person doesn't know it yet.

"Ch" has never even been _a_ word, let alone a _common_ word. It's a dead prefix.

@@IsomerMashups Pronoun ch (obsolete, dialectal) Alternative form of I The word "I" is quite common. It was short for ich the form of I used in the West Country, West Midlands, and Kent in England some time ago. Hope this helps.

@@y124music It is and has only ever been used _exclusively_ alongside other words. And, even were that _not_ the case, _it's still been out of use for centuries._ If you're willing to go back far enough and dissect prefixes enough, _every_ two-letter combination is a "word."

@@IsomerMashups so "an" isn't a word because it only comes before vowels? Also the reason it can be counted but something like "éǵh₂" obviously can't is because it was used in english that is still understandable to most speakers (at least I think that's the reason I'm not Collins Dictionary).

I was wearing a GI in karate class back in the 70's, but it was only recently added to the Official Word List. The Chinese musical instrument PIPA is in the OWL, but not other common Chinese instruments ERHU*, GUQIN* and GUZHENG*.

​​@@pjet8042 We do have to give dictionary makers a break, though. There are a lot of things out there in the world, and not enough time to give a short, easily digestible definition to all of them. Some things will be intentionally left out as if to say "look somewhere else, it'll be more enlightening than we could be", others will simply be omitted because time is finite and human knowledge is limited.

I'm more of a TWL player and Collins observer. I don't have the time or the energy to memorize that much shit, but I find high-level Collins matches to be the most fun to watch as a spectator. The extra words add extra nuances and decisionmaking to the game (see the other video on this channel about Nigel deciding whether to challenge a play off the board because he knew which of the 9,751 different suffixed variations of SULFUR was bad in Collins).

I was playing with my friend and he made the word "cornflaked". Even though it caused him to win, I knew I could never challenge such a glorious word

I don't play Scrabble but these are the rules that my friends and I play Bananagrams with.

I just don't like za as a word lol

That’s true - well put. But there’s also a burden on the competitive world to show that not all levels of competition are like this (absurd dedication to memorization/min-maxing everything). Strong home players can walk into a tournament and find lots of people at their level to play. I admit I don’t do a great job of this myself, focusing as I do on the super-elite level of play.

'That guy'

Amazing comparison that I had not considered before!

The distinction is this: Speedrunners don't pull out absurd glitches when they play a casual multiplayer game with their friends. They generally have the social awareness to understand that there's a distinction between the spirit and the law of the game. _Scrabblers don't._ _That's_ where the terrible reputation originates. I go to a weekly board game night. Every time I've seen someone passionately interested in Scrabble, they rules lawyer to hell and back and drop words like "oe" and "ch." _Nobody_ enjoys it. Fortunately, they _do_ seem to have the social awareness to realize they're unwelcome and never come back. I suppose the glares, eyerolls, and whispering makes it slightly clearer.

@@IsomerMashups What are you talking about?

@@XANDOAndy I'm sorry for your lack of reading comprehension.

​@@IsomerMashupsI mean, speedrunners absolutely will pull out glitches and similar in play against similarly skilled players. If you want someone to go easy on you, you can always ask them. Or make a rule that means the person playing the word also needs to roughly know the definition of it really is getting out of hand.

Give credit too to Arabians and Africans for QAT (also know as KAT and KHAT).

middle easterners carrying most of the “Q without U” word category:

This is exactly where I disagree. Respectfully, of course. I think they make the game worse. In my opinion, they completely change the way you play the game. Thus, dividing the player base into players who have memorised these specific two-letter words, and those who have have not. I would consider that a massive negative. House rules are fine, I use them personally. But that should not stop me from arguing in favour of changing the official rules too. Why should people who think like me not have a chance to play in tournaments? Maybe my version of scrabble should be the official one, and your version can be relegated to house rules.

​@@purpleness4422I think the two letter words just allows for more plays in general. At least personally I find that often I want to play a word that would otherwise get blocked by a 2 letter word I would otherwise think is invalid, but under Scrabble dictionary is probably perfectly fine. And the end game especially where you're scrambling to use up all your remaining letters is a perfect opportunity to squeeze in those last few points. More words=more fun imo. Besides, they're just 2 letter words they're not hard to memorize at all.

@@purpleness4422Is the game not divided into those categories as it stands now? I feel like the people who have memorized those 2 letter words have a distinct advantage in eitger scenario.

There are no weird words. There are only words you don't know yet.

Whether the weird two letter words improve or detract from the game, I think it’s clear that removing them now would have a major impact on the character and strategy of the game.

@@jiaan100 Buzz off using "autistic" as some kind of insult. Also it's not because a word is odd or foreign to you that it's not reasonable to use it. The point of scrabble is to reward a wide knowledge of words

@@jiaan100 Not words because.. you personally don't know anyone who uses them?

​@@jamessudlow lol

@@jiaan100you make a valid point, but how do you draw the line as to what constitutes “enough” usage? It could be pretty subjective. As Will said in the video, the rules of the game state that a word is valid if it appears in a mainstream dictionary, so that’s the standard which is used.

​@@jiaan100 As an autistic person you definitely are using it as such lol.

"they are barely words, I store them as code" that's exactly why people are complaining - scrabble became "use random sequences of letters soneone wrote down" instead of "show off how diverse your vocabulary is"

That's _exactly_ why people complain about it. It's not even a word game at that point.

But whats even the point of scrabble at that point

It's original origin, per this video, is *still* an abbreviation though so it being allowed is still really weird

The idea of cleaning up the dictionary of obsolete words absolutely seems like a good one on its face. The problem is that as competitive players, we're all very fond of our obscure, barely-acceptable words which we often can't even define (lol), and would hate to see them go!

@@wanderer15From a practical perspective, I can't imagine it would go smoothly. Adding new words is one thing - if players fail to memorize them, then they won't know all their options, and *might* issue a spurious challenge or two. If words are removed, but a player doesn't remember that it was? Dear lord the *salt* that would ensue.

that ruined a great bingo for me one time

This is a great way to get your channel demonitized

This would be a super interesting topic, but also has the potential to get pretty heated. I've been considering how to approach it!

I think 'Jew' was removed from Collins. Do you know why?@@wanderer15

@@henrgI once had the n-word as the only valid bingo play, but thankfully that tournament was still using CSW19

it’s not from a german word, it’s just that english used to have nearly the same word for ‘I’ as german, ‘ich.’ this is from proto-west germanic *ik, which fricated in german to ‘ich’ (fricative at the end) and affricated in english to ‘ich,’ pronounced historically as ‘each.’ the words were pronounced differently in english and german, it’s just that ‘ch’ represents a fricative in german and mostly an affricate in english

ah i was confused as he said the first person pronoun@@senecavermeulen8110

I've heard a couple stories of Scrabble experts traveling to the Faroes, asking about oes, and the locals having zero idea what they're talking about

HA! Proof that scrabble nerds just made this shit up! "ZA", yeah right.

@@warrendsmith6832 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qkP2F7kWn7A.htmlsi=IG_L4j4dkpool_SD

You mean dictionary makers, not Scrabble nerds. Blame the people who put together the source dictionaries, which had nothing to do with Scrabble. The one and only one example I know of a set of words being added to the Scrabble dictionary without coming from the source (general purpose, not Scrabble) dictionary was the time the Scrabble owners had a little publicity stunt and had people vote on a word to add. GEOCACHE was the word voted in, and was added, along with its related forms like GEOCACHED etc. Other than that, it has always been the case that dictionary makers decide to add a word to their dictionary for dictionary making reasons that have nothing to do with Scrabble. So yeah, Scrabble players did not make up ZA or CH or anything else. They got included because they were in an actual English dictionary. @@warrendsmith6832

How cool! Thank you for stopping by my channel and watch out for those "oes" ;)

It's not really "impolite", challenging is part of the box rules of Scrabble and you can easily prevent your opponent by doing it by improving your word knowledge so you can spot fake words (which are called phonies in competitive scrabble) and challenge them off more easily This is a legitimate strategy used by tournament players, some of the (fake) words I recall having been played successfully by top tournament players in a desperate attempt to get back into the game are TETIART, REDISCERN, and OVERTALL. Of course, you could call this "cheating", but it's part of the box rules, and like I said you can easily prevent this from happening to you if you get better at recognizing phonies, and each of these cases the opponent made a mistake by not recognizing that those words aren't real and not challenging them. Also in my opinion, phonying being a valid strategy adds another dimension of bluffing to the game and makes for some of the most hilarious stories. Top Scrabble player Josh Sokol got away with BOBETAH in a game and defined it as a cross between a bobcat and cheetah.

This is how the band Foghat was formed

Thank you for giving my videos a chance!

GUAC at least is coming in the 7th edition update!

What if someone is well educated in a certain topic and regularly uses obscure chemical names for example? They're clearly real words, but would that make it into your "people's dictionary"?

But this does not eliminate memorization at all. You would have to memorize what is on the "normal word" list and what is not. Also this would feel awful to play casually because a word you use in your day-to-day life might not be in the basic dictionary and you can't really guess.

just find some crazy person to spend 3 years and do it themselves

@@denisl2760 In order to make it into the people's dictionary, it would have to be upvoted by a certain percentage of voters, eliminating obscure expertise problems.

@@brainface2970 It might not eliminate memorization but it would greatly reduce it. If you have "DABINGL" on your rack, you'll find a bingo or not, depending on your strengths as a player of ordinary words. But if I play it, you won't challenge it because you'll go "Oh, yeah, fair, that's a word." But if I ask someone who is not memorizing the Collins to find a word using "OORIE," they might not find "oorie" unless they're Scottish.

Thank you so much! It was a little different than the game analysis videos for sure, which revolve a lot around the game board. I'll definitely be experimenting with this format more.

I compare Scrabble to Magic a lot - a game with a very very large “move set” (words in Scrabble, cards in Magic) but Magic cards are obviously very purposefully created to perform a certain role, whereas in Scrabble, the development of language is completely random (detached, to use your word).

Interesting suggestion! I do think the top players would make that extra effort. It surely would not be as easy to memorize - it would introduce another barrier to full in-game mastery of the dictionary, but I don't think it would be an unreachable level of memorization.

This is more or less the house rule I play with (in noncompetitive, i.e. fun, Scrabble)

@@RealGrouchy -yes, when I play against non-tournament players (i.e. living room Scrabble), I only play a word if I can define it.

That's the house rule I use against less experienced players. They can look up words freely, but I'll only play a word if I can give a definition.

The opposite of Nigel Richards and French

I have thought this too. I didn't get into this in the video, but one (and only one) of the OSPD updates did conform to a multi-source standard, whereas the rest became single-source (as I mentioned, the reason is increasingly that there aren't enough places updating regularly for there to even be a multi-source requirement anymore)

It would also create an interesting experience for tournament play. They would have to use a highly decreased dictionary, limiting their options.

​​@@memyselfishnessMaybe it could be a separately sanctioned Scrabble variant, akin to how FIDE has started sanctioning tournaments for Chess 960/Fischer Random Chess in addition to standard chess. Maybe it could be Scrabble's answer to bullet chess.

A dictionary designed for school kids would probably do the trick here. You could use one in your games at home. I'm sure lots of families already do something similar.

@@procsorted I don't think that's a good approach. Highly technical obscure words that are still used should be allowed, such as chemical names. Archaic foreign versions of spellings of words that aren't used anywhere and slang that is only used when texting friends should not be allowed.

@@denisl2760 Ah so you want the Denis dictionary. Fair enough. Just let the publishers know which words you like 😋

And "Eh" as well! I use that word every day! Unrelated question, guess which country I'm from!

I've seen many people say that onomatopoeia shouldn't really be words

and "we" and "or"!! (1:00)

@@Charles-yi3mx That seems silly to me. Where do you draw the line? Should words like honk or bang be invalid?

@@Muskoxing why should'nt they ? both are frequently used verbs...

Qi is clearly a word. Za is slang that should not be a word.

The words BINGOING and BINGOED are actually only in the Scrabble dictionary because of Scrabble. The definition of BINGOED in the Collins dictionary is "BINGO, to play all seven of one's tiles at Scrabble [v]".

NU complaints surprise me too!

@@denisl2760 - ZA bothered me too when it was added to the official dictionary. I wondered if it was a regional thing (like the way a sandwich is either a sub, a hero or a hoagie depending on where you are in the U.S.) but I've yet to hear pizza referred to as za anywhere.

There's a comment in the mix complaining about "or" as well. Some people don't think before they speak.

@@Charles-yi3mx I even once had a comment of someone listing "BE" as a word they disliked, but couldn't dig it up when I searched for it (maybe deleted in shame?)

This is literally my reaction when seeing people complaining about QI. Bro QI is more well known than like 80% of all the 2-letter words in Scrabble from both dictionary

They probably think of it, rightly or wrongly, as an abbreviation of "abdominal muscle"

I don't bristle. I understand strategy is involved. I like competition. I still think that the list of words in the competitive game should match general knowledge or risk becoming an elitist gated experience -- which is what we observe. So be it.

@@qqw743 It doesnt take much to memorize all the 2 letter words.

@@qqw743 There's 107 two-letter words in scrabble. I don't even play the game competitively but that's hardly anything to memorize.

@@qqw743 I really don't disagree with this point of view. It's a shame that so much of the good stuff in Scrabble is in fact gated behind the oddness of the words.

​@@qqw743 Yeah but the problem is, how do you define "general knowledge" in an objective way, that still allows millions of people to play by one standard set of words? No matter how you do it, some of the words are going to be "weird" to somebody. Setting the standard at "this word appears in reputable dictionaries" seems fine. Much better that way, vs. "internet rando thinks this word is dumb, take it out"

urban dictionary

Scrabble is great at all levels as long as there isn't a huge knowledge or skill gap between players - agree that one person going crazy with those weird "Scrabbly" words against others who don't know them isn't conducive to a fun game.

I mean that's gotta be only the fifth best complaint about ch. A shortened, fused version of a German pronoun that fell out of use over 500 years ago? Come on now.

and even if EM and EN weren't typesetting terms, they would still be the names of the letters "M" and "N". Even funnier than people challenging EM and EN is people challenging AB, ET, and QI. Some of the comments shown at the beginning of the video even challenge the validity of OR and WE. I can understand not knowing that FE is the 17th letter of the Hebrew abjad or that DE is the fifth letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, but not knowing AB or QI?

You'll have to show them this video ;)

The fact that you don't understand _why_ people are upset with you demonstrates precisely the lack of social awareness which is causing them to get upset with you in the first place.

@@IsomerMashups I’m cool with the people who scolded me after I showed them this video. I’m fine now.

also people questioning 'za' as a word is vindicating for me hating when people refer to pizza as 'za'

OH MY GOD SOMEONE QUESTIONING "WE" AS A WORD LMFAO -we- need to ban that person from everything /j

Word.

True! But I really do understand why the dictionary frustrates a lot of people. I don't expect this video to change too many minds, but at least it'll explain how things came to be the way they are.

In over 20 years of playing in our local club, there were 2 incidents where someone came up to us in a coffee shop, observed the "weird" words on the board, and became angry and argumentative.

Thank you very much!

Avatar ?

@@xl000 Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's a pretty popular show and there's a part in it where the main character has to "channel their qi" or something.

@@santaisreal are you talking about the 2005 Nickelodeon anime ?

@@xl000 idk what year it was or if it was on nickelodeon lol i watched it on like netflix or something

Yes, it is.

These are the turns in competitive games that drain the most time - the endgame (perfect information) and when your opponent plays a phony bingo which you challenge off. Some of those decisions are brutally complicated (and very interesting, as you suggest)

Newsflash: the reason you don't understand it is because you're the one causing the bad reputation Scrabble fans have.

I hear you on this, but I also think the skeptics have a valid point too. At least for me, knowing that there's a process in place to try and be consistent with what gets in makes me feel a little bit better. It's not actually random or a result of Scrabble players "making things up."

Which is a bit weird. Isn't 'za typically spelled with an apostrophe, which the rules say excludes it?

"Ch" is unpronounceable, as it lacks a vowel.

"Ch" contains no vowels. It is literally unpronounceable.

The reason people don't like Scrabbleheads is because Scrabbleheads think a video like that would change any non-Scrabblehead's mind.

Playing in family situations, you can (and probably should) agree to play with a smaller wordlist, eg. whatever dictionary you have on the shelf.

When I was very small, PH was once a valid word I swear I played this word before. Also EMF was valid too!!!! Now both of these words no longer exist

My dude, you have gotten to the level of Scrabble brain-rot that you are _knowingly antagonizing your own mother._ I've got four letters for you: S-T-O-P.