7-letter words with N as the 1st letter and A as the 3rd letter

The pattern is N?A????, with NEAREST and NEARING among its more familiar matches. The small total stands out beside 633 seven-letter words with S first and A third. Many matches are less familiar, so the strongest clue is often the fixed letter pattern rather than a guess at meaning.

At a glance: the N-and-A pattern

• There are 18 tournament-dictionary matches for N in position one and A in position three.
• NEAREST, NIAGARA, NEARING, NUANCED and NUANCES are among the recognizable entries.
• Five matches fall within the top 25,000 English words by frequency.
• Six words end in S; only two end in A.
• NYANZAS leads the score list at 19 points, ahead of NYAFFED at 17.

Which N-and-A words score the most?

NYANZAS is the top scorer at 19 points, with NYAFFED next at 17. NAARTJE reaches 14, while NEAFFES scores 13. These unusual entries are worth checking against your game's dictionary before you commit them.

For a more familiar choice, NUANCED scores 10 and NEARING is another recognizable fit. The score leaders are not the everyday words: the top two entries are much less common than NEAREST or NIAGARA.

How widely are these words accepted?

The 18-word total combines entries from Collins, NWL2023 and ENABLE; the source counts are 16, 10 and 7 respectively, and they overlap. Only 11 matches have definitions used for this list, so some entries will be unfamiliar even when a tournament dictionary accepts them.

The endings narrow the search: S accounts for six matches, while G appears three times. A and D each finish two words. No match ends in N, despite N being fixed at the start.

Use the full pattern to narrow your search