7-letter words with M as the 3rd letter and L as the 4th letter

The fixed pattern is _ _ M L _ _ _. Its small set has a clear tilt: 15 words end in S, while only 6 begin with A and 5 begin with G. None ranks among the commonest English words, so expect several entries to be tournament vocabulary rather than everyday guesses.

The M and L pattern at a glance

• There are 26 seven-letter matches with M third and L fourth.
• Collins includes 26; NWL2023 includes 24, and ENABLE includes 22.
• JAMLIKE leads the score list at 20 points; HEMLOCK follows at 18.
• 15 words end in S, compared with 6 ending in E.
• The set has zero common entries by the frequency cutoff.

How many 7-letter words have M third and L fourth?

There are 26 matches across the tournament dictionaries, but the count changes with the word list: Collins has all 26, NWL2023 has 24, and ENABLE has 22.

Compare that tight group with the 537 words that put L in both the third and fourth positions. Keeping L fourth while changing the third letter to A gives 246 matches; M is a much narrower clue.

Which examples and endings stand out?

Start with recognizable forms such as HAMLETS, HEMLINE, and AIMLESS. The ending pattern is unusually concentrated: 15 matches finish in S, while E appears at the end of 6. If your rack or crossing letters point to a plural, test the final S early.

For score hunting, JAMLIKE is the standout at 20 points, followed by HEMLOCK at 18. MAMLUKS, ARMLOCK, and CYMLING each reach 15, so a less familiar word can outscore a more recognizable one. AIMLESS, ARMLESS, RIMLESS and GUMLESS all end in -LESS, which accounts for four of the 15 S endings.