The Letters That Make the Most Words: English's Biggest Anagram Families
Five letters, A E P R S, can be arranged into 12 different words. We searched our 168,000-word dictionary for the letter sets with the most anagrams.
· 2 min read
Rearrange the letters of PEARS and you can make SPARE, SPEAR, REAPS, PARSE and more: twelve words from five letters. We went through every word of four to eight letters in our dictionary to find the letter sets with the most anagrams.
The biggest families
| Letters | Words | The anagrams |
|---|---|---|
| A E P R S | 12 | apers, apres, asper, pares, parse, pears, prase, presa, rapes, reaps, spare, spear |
| A E L R S T | 11 | alerts, alters, artels, estral, laster, ratels, salter, slater, staler, stelar, talers |
| A E L S T | 10 | least, setal, slate, stale, steal, stela, taels, tales, teals, tesla |
| E I N R S T | 9 | estrin, inerts, insert, inters, niters, nitres, sinter, triens, trines |
| A E L P S T | 9 | palest, palets, pastel, petals, plates, pleats, septal, staple, tepals |
| A E I N R S T | 9 | anestri, antsier, nastier, ratines, retains, retinas, retsina, stainer, stearin |
| A C E P R S | 9 | capers, crapes, escarp, pacers, parsec, recaps, scrape, secpar, spacer |
In total, 52 letter sets of four to eight letters make seven or more words.
Why these letters?
Look at what the winners have in common: E, S, R, T, A and L. These are some of the most common letters in English, and many words differ only in where the S goes (PEARS, SPEAR) or whether a word is a plural, a verb or a noun (LEAST, STEAL, TALES). Common letters plus a movable S is the recipe for a big anagram family.
Seven-letter sets like A E I N R S T are especially valuable in tile games: RETAINS, NASTIER, RETINAS and STAINER all use a full rack, and there are so many ways to lay them out that one almost always fits.
Everyday families
Many of the words above are rare. If you only count everyday words, these families still stand out:
- LEAST, SLATE, STALE, STEAL, TALES (and TESLA)
- PASTEL, PETALS, PLATES, STAPLE
- PEARS, SPARE, SPEAR (and RAPES)
- ACRES, CARES, RACES, SCARE
Try your own
Type any word into the Anagram Solver to see every other word its letters make, including the near misses that are one letter short. For every word you can make from a set of letters, not just the full-length ones, use the Word Unscrambler.