BURKE is a valid Scrabble word — 11 points
Yes. BURKE is accepted by every list we check: Collins, the North American lists and Words with Friends. It scores 11 points in Scrabble and 13 in Words with Friends.
Which word lists accept BURKE?
| 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: 41 / 100
Our own measure of how useful BURKE is to know. It scores 11 from 5 tiles, takes 3 hooks, and its letters make up 5.0% of the bag. How this number is calculated
Hooks for BURKE
Checked against OSPD, TWL, CSW, WWF. Takes an S, so it hooks onto plurals easily.
How BURKE scores
Face value of the 5 tiles in BURKE, before any board multiplier.
Tiles you need
| Letter | Needed | In the bag |
|---|---|---|
| b | 1 | 2 |
| u | 1 | 4 |
| r | 1 | 6 |
| k | 1 | 1 |
| e | 1 | 12 |
Drawing exactly these 5 tiles as an opening rack: 1 in 130,708.
What does BURKE mean in Scrabble?
verb
Britishhistorical
To murder someone by suffocation, leaving little sign of violence, or, figuratively, to suppress a matter quietly.
To burke someone originally meant to smother a victim so the body could be sold intact to anatomy schools for dissection, a method linked to the notorious Edinburgh murders of 1828 carried out by William Burke and his partner. Once the case became widely known, English speakers turned the surname into an ordinary lowercase verb for that specific method of killing. From there the word picked up a second, milder sense: to burke a question, a debate or an inquiry means to quietly smother it rather than let it be openly discussed. Both senses now belong mainly to historical and journalistic writing rather than everyday speech.
How BURKE is used
Chiefly historical for the literal sense; the figurative sense of quietly suppressing a matter still turns up in journalism and formal writing.
- The court heard how the pair would burke their victims for profit.
- Historians still argue over how many people the gang would burke in a single year.
- Committee members were accused of trying to burke the report before it reached the public.
- The editor refused to burke the story despite pressure from above.
- Officials cannot simply burke an inquiry once journalists start asking questions.
Written for this site: 1 meaning of BURKE and 5 example sentences, not copied from a published dictionary.
Words starting with BURKE
4 longer words begin with BURKE.
Shorter words from the letters in BURKE
Common questions about BURKE
- Is BURKE valid in Words with Friends?
- Yes. Words with Friends accepts BURKE, where it scores 13 points. That game keeps its own list, separate from the Scrabble dictionaries.
- How many points is BURKE worth?
- BURKE is worth 11 points in Scrabble and 13 points in Words with Friends.
- What does BURKE mean?
- To murder someone by suffocation, leaving little sign of violence, or, figuratively, to suppress a matter quietly.
- What letters can be added to BURKE?
- BURKE takes 3 hooks: 0 in front and 3 at the end.
Every word you can build from the 5 letters of BURKE:
Open BURKE in the Word Finder