5-Letter Words Starting With S and Ending in M

Words that start with S and end in M come up constantly in tile games, crosswords and daily letter puzzles, and this page gathers all 20 of the five-letter ones. The most useful are the common words at the top of the list; the rare ones at the bottom are worth knowing when you need to hook onto an awkward board position. SHAWM is the top scorer here, worth 13 points before any board multiplier.

How to use this page

Read the list from the top if you want the everyday words, or jump to the quick facts for the highest scorers. Click any word with a link to see every shorter word hidden inside it. When you have a specific rack, the search box at the top filters the list down to the words you can play right now.

Tips

If you know some letters of a word and their positions, a pattern search finds it faster than scanning a list. Open the word finder, type the word with question marks for the unknown letters, and every match appears immediately. You can combine a pattern with the starts-with and ends-with filters to narrow the set further. This works for crosswords, for daily five-letter puzzles and for any tile game where a board word gives you two or three fixed letters.

Questions

What is the highest-scoring word among the five-letter words starting with S and ending in M?

SHAWM scores 13 points with classic tile values, ignoring board multipliers. The full top ten is in the quick facts above; switch the tile set on the search tool if you play with different letter values.

Why are some of these words unfamiliar?

9 of the 20 words on this page are tagged rare, meaning they fall outside the usual spell-check vocabulary. They are still real words, and many are legal plays, but you should expect a challenge if someone asks you to define them.