JAVEL is valid in Collins, not in North America — 15 points
It depends on the list you play by. JAVEL is in Collins, used in the UK and most of the world, but it is not in the North American lists — so in a US or Canadian game an opponent can challenge it off the board. Worth 15 points. Words with Friends does not accept it either.
Which word lists accept JAVEL?
| Official Scrabble Players DictionaryUSA, Canada, Thailand | Not listed |
|---|---|
| Official Tournament and Club Word ListUSA, Canada, Thailand | Not listed |
| Collins Scrabble WordsEnglish in most countries | Valid |
| Words with FriendsZynga word list | Not listed |
Word power: 43 / 100
Our own measure of how useful JAVEL is to know. It scores 15 from 5 tiles, takes 1 hook, and its letters make up 5.6% of the bag. How this number is calculated
Hooks for JAVEL
Front hooks — 0
None.
Back hooks — 1
javelsChecked against OSPD, TWL, CSW, WWF. Takes an S, so it hooks onto plurals easily.
How JAVEL scores
Face value of the 5 tiles in JAVEL, before any board multiplier.
Tiles you need
| Letter | Needed | In the bag |
|---|---|---|
| j | 1 | 1 |
| a | 1 | 9 |
| v | 1 | 2 |
| e | 1 | 12 |
| l | 1 | 4 |
Drawing exactly these 5 tiles as an opening rack: 1 in 87,138.
What does JAVEL mean in Scrabble?
noun
archaicliterary
An idle, disreputable vagabond or worthless fellow, a term used by the poet Edmund Spenser.
A javel was an old term of contempt for a shiftless, low character who wandered without honest occupation. The word appears in the writing of the sixteenth-century poet Edmund Spenser, whose language often preserved words that had already grown rare elsewhere. Later dictionaries kept javel chiefly as a curiosity of literary and dialect vocabulary rather than as a term in ordinary use. Today the word turns up almost only in glossaries of archaic English and in word-game lists.
How JAVEL is used
Archaic and literary; known mainly from Spenser's poetry and from historical dictionaries rather than from living speech.
- Spenser calls the ragged wanderer a javel in his verse.
- The old glossary defines javel as a worthless vagabond.
- No respectable household would shelter a javel for the night.
- The knight scorned the beggar as a mere javel.
- Scholars note javel among the poet's more obscure archaisms.
Written for this site: 1 meaning of JAVEL and 5 example sentences, not copied from a published dictionary.
Words starting with JAVEL
8 longer words begin with JAVEL.
Shorter words from the letters in JAVEL
Common questions about JAVEL
- Is JAVEL valid in Words with Friends?
- No. Words with Friends keeps its own list, separate from the Scrabble dictionaries, and JAVEL is not in it.
- How many points is JAVEL worth?
- JAVEL is worth 15 points in Scrabble and 19 points in Words with Friends.
- What does JAVEL mean?
- An idle, disreputable vagabond or worthless fellow, a term used by the poet Edmund Spenser.
- What letters can be added to JAVEL?
- JAVEL takes 1 hook: 0 in front and 1 at the end.
Every word you can build from the 5 letters of JAVEL:
Open JAVEL in the Word Finder