11-letter words with W as the 2nd letter

W barely appears in second place at eleven letters, with 74 words in total. Almost all of them open with S, T or A, which puts an S sound before the W. Sweepstakes, switchboard and sweethearts are the familiar faces, and 48 of the 74 entries end in S.

SW, TW and AW are the only real families

47 of the 74 words begin SW, so S is the default first letter. Switchboard, switchblade and switchbacks show the busiest shape, while sweepstakes, sweethearts and sweetbreads trade -itch for -eet.

TW takes 14 words, from twelvemonth to twinkletoes, and AW holds 7, led by awkwardness and awesomeness. Only six entries start with anything else, so D, K, O and Z between them cover a handful.

Second-place W is far rarer at eleven letters than at eight, where 327 words carry it. The count slides from 124 at ten letters to 74 here and 37 at twelve, so the pattern thins as spellings grow longer.

The endings here are unusually uniform

48 of the 74 words finish in S, about two thirds. That is one of the highest S rates of any second-letter pattern; E follows with 5, then G and R with 4 each.

Scores follow the rare letters. zwischenzug reaches 38 on a doubled Z, switchbacks lands on 27, and kwashiorkor, swashbuckle, swatchbooks and swivelblock all score 25.

Many entries are compounds stitched from two short words: switchboard, switchblade, sweetbreads and twelvemonth. Once the first four letters are known, those halves make a crossword fill easy to confirm in a hurry. Switchyards and switchgrass follow the same recipe.

A small set that splits by dictionary