OBELUS is a valid Scrabble word — 8 points
Yes. OBELUS is accepted by every list we check: Collins, the North American lists and Words with Friends. It scores 8 points in Scrabble and 11 in Words with Friends.
Which word lists accept OBELUS?
| 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: 26 / 100
Our own measure of how useful OBELUS is to know. It scores 8 from 6 tiles, takes 0 hooks, and its letters make up 5.7% of the bag. How this number is calculated
Hooks for OBELUS
No single letter turns OBELUS into another word.
How OBELUS scores
Face value of the 6 tiles in OBELUS, before any board multiplier.
Tiles you need
| Letter | Needed | In the bag |
|---|---|---|
| o | 1 | 8 |
| b | 1 | 2 |
| e | 1 | 12 |
| l | 1 | 4 |
| u | 1 | 4 |
| s | 1 | 4 |
Drawing exactly these 6 tiles as an opening rack: 1 in 97,009.
What stands out about OBELUS
- The same 6 tiles also spell 2 other words, so the rack is worth re-reading before you play it.
Counted from the four word lists we hold, not taken from anywhere else. How we calculate things
What does OBELUS mean in Scrabble?
noun
printinghistorical
A mark, historically a dagger or division sign, used to flag a doubtful passage in a manuscript or to indicate division in mathematics.
Ancient and medieval scribes placed an obelus beside a line of text they suspected was corrupted, added later, or otherwise doubtful, letting later readers judge the passage for themselves rather than silently changing it. The same symbol survives today in two very different guises: the dagger mark used in printing to flag a footnote, and the division sign written as a horizontal line between two dots. Despite looking so different from each other, both modern symbols descend from the same obelus used by classical editors.
How OBELUS is used
A specialist term from printing, textual scholarship, and the history of mathematics, rarely used in everyday speech.
- The editor marked the suspect line with an obelus rather than deleting it outright.
- In the printed footnote, an obelus pointed the reader to a further note.
- Ancient copyists used the obelus to flag verses they doubted were original.
- The manuscript's margins were dotted with an obelus wherever the scribe hesitated.
- Some old arithmetic books still print division using the obelus rather than a slash.
Written for this site: 1 meaning of OBELUS and 5 example sentences, not copied from a published dictionary.
Anagrams of OBELUS
The 6 tiles of OBELUS in a different order — 2 found.
Shorter words from the letters in OBELUS
Showing 40 of 65. See all in the Word Finder
Common questions about OBELUS
- Is OBELUS valid in Words with Friends?
- Yes. Words with Friends accepts OBELUS, where it scores 11 points. That game keeps its own list, separate from the Scrabble dictionaries.
- How many points is OBELUS worth?
- OBELUS is worth 8 points in Scrabble and 11 points in Words with Friends.
- What does OBELUS mean?
- A mark, historically a dagger or division sign, used to flag a doubtful passage in a manuscript or to indicate division in mathematics.
- What letters can be added to OBELUS?
- No single letter can be added to OBELUS to make another word.
Every word you can build from the 6 letters of OBELUS:
Open OBELUS in the Word Finder