Q without U: the complete list of 29 words

By Louisa Lowe, Editor — Words & Word Games · Published 30 July 2026

The letter Q is worth ten points in Scrabble for a reason: nearly every Q word needs a U. Exactly 29 words in our 168,401-word dictionary manage without one, and they are worth knowing by heart.

The complete list

buqshabuqshasfaqirfaqirsqaidqaidsqanatqanatsqatqatsqindarqindarkaqindarsqintarqintarsqiviutqiviutsqophqophsqwertyqwertyssheqalimsheqelsuqsuqstranqtranqsumiaqumiaqs

Strip the plurals and the list is really 16 root words. Almost all are loanwords, which is the point: English itself insists on QU, so the exceptions arrive from languages — Arabic, Hebrew, Albanian, Inuktitut — whose romanisation uses a bare Q.

What they mean

qat — a shrub whose leaves are chewed as a stimulant (also spelled khat)
qaid — a North African chieftain or local governor (also caid)
qanat — an underground channel that carries water in arid country
qoph — the nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet
qwerty — the standard keyboard layout, named for its top row
suq — a market or bazaar in the Arab world (also souk)
tranq — informal short form of tranquilliser
umiaq — an open Inuit boat made of skins stretched over a frame
faqir — a Muslim (or Hindu) religious ascetic (also fakir)
qiviut — the soft underwool of the musk ox
sheqel — the currency of Israel (plural sheqalim; also shekel)
qindar — a small Albanian coin, one hundredth of a lek (also qintar; plural qindarka)
buqsha — a former coin of Yemen

The Scrabble angle

Drawing the Q without a U is one of the classic bad beats in Scrabble. QAT and its plural QATS are the standard escape: short, easy to hook, and they turn a ten-point liability into a scoring play. QAID, QOPH and SUQ cover the racks QAT cannot. Modern tournament dictionaries also allow QI (the life force in Chinese philosophy), which has become the most played Q word in competitive Scrabble — our public-domain list predates its adoption, so you will not find it here, but you should know it exists across the board from a Collins or NASPA player.

The Wordle angle

Five of these words are five letters long: FAQIR, QAIDS, QANAT, QOPHS, TRANQ, UMIAQ. None is likely to be a Wordle answer, but they are exactly the sort of pattern-breakers worth remembering when a Q appears and the U is already grey.

For the rest of the rare-letter tour, see the complete lists of words ending in Q, ending in J and five-letter words starting with X — or check any letters against the unscrambler.

Frequently asked questions

How many English words have a Q but no U?

Our dictionary contains 29 of them, plurals included. Nearly all are borrowed from languages whose romanisation writes Q alone, such as Arabic and Hebrew.

What is the best Q-without-U word in Scrabble?

QAT (and QATS) is the workhorse: short, common in game dictionaries and easy to place. In current tournament lists QI is even better, though it postdates our public-domain lexicon.

Why does Q almost always need a U?

In native English spelling the QU pair represents the /kw/ sound, a convention inherited from Latin via French. Only transliterated loanwords break it, which is why the exceptions all look exotic.

Are these words valid in Wordle?

Wordle validity depends on the New York Times guess list, which we cannot speak for. The five-letter candidates from our list are FAQIR, QAIDS, QANAT, QOPHS, TRANQ, UMIAQ.