BILBO is a valid Scrabble word — 9 points
Yes. BILBO is accepted by every list we check: Collins, the North American lists and Words with Friends. It scores 9 points in Scrabble and 12 in Words with Friends.
Which word lists accept BILBO?
| Official Scrabble Players DictionaryUSA, Canada, Thailand | Valid |
|---|---|
| Official Tournament and Club Word ListUSA, Canada, Thailand | Valid |
| Collins Scrabble WordsEnglish in most countries | Valid |
| Words with FriendsZynga word list | Valid |
Word power: 35 / 100
Our own measure of how useful BILBO is to know. It scores 9 from 5 tiles, takes 2 hooks, and its letters make up 5.0% of the bag. How this number is calculated
Hooks for BILBO
Checked against OSPD, TWL, CSW, WWF. Takes an S, so it hooks onto plurals easily.
How BILBO scores
Face value of the 5 tiles in BILBO, before any board multiplier.
Tiles you need
| Letter | Needed | In the bag |
|---|---|---|
| b | 2 | 2 |
| i | 1 | 9 |
| l | 1 | 4 |
| o | 1 | 8 |
Drawing exactly these 5 tiles as an opening rack: 1 in 261,415.
What does BILBO mean in Scrabble?
noun
historical
A sword with a slender, well-tempered, flexible blade, named after the Spanish port city of Bilbao where such rapiers were once forged; also, a long iron bar fitted with sliding shackles and a lock, once used to confine a prisoner's ankles, especially aboard a ship.
Spanish smiths working in and around Bilbao gained such a reputation for tempering steel that English speakers began calling any similarly springy, well-balanced rapier a bilbo, whether or not it had actually been forged there. A soldier who owned a good bilbo prized a blade that could bend nearly double in a demonstration of quality and still spring back perfectly straight. Quite separately, sailors gave the same name, bilbo, to a length of iron bar strung with sliding rings that a ship's officers locked around a troublesome crewman's ankles to hold him fast below decks. Both senses of bilbo now belong mainly to historical writing about earlier swordsmithing and shipboard discipline rather than to everyday modern speech.
How BILBO is used
Historical; met in writing about earlier European swordsmithing and, in its other sense, about older naval punishment, rather than in current everyday speech.
- The duelist drew a slender bilbo famous for its springy, well-tempered blade.
- Sailors dreaded being clapped in the bilbo for defying an officer.
- A merchant's inventory once listed a fine bilbo among his imported Spanish goods.
- The mutineer spent two days locked in a bilbo below the main deck.
- Historical novels sometimes describe a captain ordering a rebellious sailor into the bilbo.
Written for this site: 1 meaning of BILBO and 5 example sentences, not copied from a published dictionary.
Words starting with BILBO
4 longer words begin with BILBO.
Shorter words from the letters in BILBO
Common questions about BILBO
- Is BILBO valid in Words with Friends?
- Yes. Words with Friends accepts BILBO, where it scores 12 points. That game keeps its own list, separate from the Scrabble dictionaries.
- How many points is BILBO worth?
- BILBO is worth 9 points in Scrabble and 12 points in Words with Friends.
- What does BILBO mean?
- A sword with a slender, well-tempered, flexible blade, named after the Spanish port city of Bilbao where such rapiers were once forged; also, a long iron bar fitted with sliding shackles and a lock, once used to confine a prisoner's ankles, especially aboard a ship.
- What letters can be added to BILBO?
- BILBO takes 2 hooks: 0 in front and 2 at the end.
Every word you can build from the 5 letters of BILBO:
Open BILBO in the Word Finder