JOUAL is a valid Scrabble word — 12 points
Yes. JOUAL is accepted by every list we check: Collins, the North American lists and Words with Friends. It scores 12 points in Scrabble and 16 in Words with Friends.
Which word lists accept JOUAL?
| 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: 37 / 100
Our own measure of how useful JOUAL is to know. It scores 12 from 5 tiles, takes 1 hook, and its letters make up 5.2% of the bag. How this number is calculated
Hooks for JOUAL
Front hooks — 0
None.
Back hooks — 1
joualsChecked against OSPD, TWL, CSW, WWF. Takes an S, so it hooks onto plurals easily.
How JOUAL scores
Face value of the 5 tiles in JOUAL, before any board multiplier.
Tiles you need
| Letter | Needed | In the bag |
|---|---|---|
| j | 1 | 1 |
| o | 1 | 8 |
| u | 1 | 4 |
| a | 1 | 9 |
| l | 1 | 4 |
Drawing exactly these 5 tiles as an opening rack: 1 in 65,354.
What stands out about JOUAL
- JOUAL runs three vowels in a row, which almost no English word does.
Counted from the four word lists we hold, not taken from anywhere else. How we calculate things
What does JOUAL mean in Scrabble?
noun
North American
A nonstandard variety of French, marked by distinctive pronunciation and English borrowings, historically associated with the working class of Quebec.
Joual developed among French speakers in Montreal and other Quebec cities, diverging from standard European and Canadian French through altered vowel sounds, informal grammar and a heavy mix of English loanwords absorbed from daily contact with English speakers. For much of the twentieth century joual carried a stigma as a mark of poor education, though writers and playwrights later embraced it deliberately to give working-class characters an authentic voice. Linguists study joual both as a social dialect and as evidence of how prolonged language contact reshapes everyday speech. The name itself is thought to come from a local pronunciation of the French word for horse, cheval.
How JOUAL is used
Used in linguistics and Quebec cultural writing for this working-class variety of French, sometimes with lingering negative connotations.
- The playwright wrote the dialogue entirely in joual.
- Linguists recorded hours of joual spoken in Montreal neighbourhoods.
- Her grandmother spoke joual at home despite scorn from teachers.
- The novel captures joual with striking accuracy.
- Some younger Quebecers now embrace joual as part of their identity.
Written for this site: 1 meaning of JOUAL and 5 example sentences, not copied from a published dictionary.
Words starting with JOUAL
1 longer words begin with JOUAL.
Shorter words from the letters in JOUAL
Common questions about JOUAL
- Is JOUAL valid in Words with Friends?
- Yes. Words with Friends accepts JOUAL, where it scores 16 points. That game keeps its own list, separate from the Scrabble dictionaries.
- How many points is JOUAL worth?
- JOUAL is worth 12 points in Scrabble and 16 points in Words with Friends.
- What does JOUAL mean?
- A nonstandard variety of French, marked by distinctive pronunciation and English borrowings, historically associated with the working class of Quebec.
- What letters can be added to JOUAL?
- JOUAL takes 1 hook: 0 in front and 1 at the end.
Every word you can build from the 5 letters of JOUAL:
Open JOUAL in the Word Finder