11-letter words ending in W

W is one of the rarest final letters at eleven letters, closing only 17 words. Six of them begin with counter-, from counterflow to counterview, and just one entry, marshmallow, counts as a common word. Scores stay high, with jinrickshaw leading at 30 points.

The 17-word W-ending list at a glance

• 17 eleven-letter words end in W, and Collins holds all 17.
• C opens 7 of them, including 6 counter- words.
• Only marshmallow counts as a common word.
• Jinrickshaw tops the list at 30 points, on an average of 20.2.
• W is the fifth-rarest final letter at this length.
• 11 of the 17 words have a definition.

Counter- builds six of the seventeen

Counterflow, counterblow, counterdraw, counterdrew, counterglow and counterview share the counter- opening. Clapperclaw adds a seventh C word.

The prefix turns a short verb or noun into a longer word, which is why it carries six of the 17 here. Counterdraw and counterdrew are near neighbours, differing only in tense.

Windlestraw, woodswallow and hereinbelow come from older English, and marshmallow is the only entry most readers will meet outside a word game.

Who ends words with W?

Final W is rare because English prefers W inside a word or after a vowel. At eleven letters just 17 entries qualify, against 12,484 that end in S. A W that ends a word almost always follows a vowel, as in -low, -view and -claw.

The short neighbours are almost as thin: one eleven-letter word ends in V, two in U and two in Z. W sits just behind them in the rarity table.

That makes W-ending words easy to rule out. If a grid demands a final W at this length, the candidate set is small enough to check by eye.

J and doubled letters lift the scores