There are 80 palindromes of three letters or more in our 106,000-word dictionary. The longest is malayalam (9 letters), followed by deified, reviver and rotator (7 letters each). Most palindromes are short: 41 of the 80 have just three letters.
A palindrome is a word that reads the same forward and backward, like level or noon. Every list on this page comes from MyWordSolver’s own word database, built on the 1913 Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Single letters are palindromes by default, so we’ve left them out and counted only words of three letters or more.
Palindromes by the numbers
| Length | Palindromes | Share of the 80 |
|---|---|---|
| 9 letters | 1 | 1.3% |
| 8 letters | 0 | 0% |
| 7 letters | 3 | 3.8% |
| 6 letters | 5 | 6.3% |
| 5 letters | 20 | 25.0% |
| 4 letters | 10 | 12.5% |
| 3 letters | 41 | 51.3% |
Palindromes get scarcer as they get longer, with one oddity: there are twice as many 5-letter palindromes as 4-letter ones. An odd-length palindrome gets a free letter in the middle that doesn’t need a partner, which makes them easier to form. There is no 8-letter palindrome in the dictionary at all.
The longest palindromes, explained
9 letters
- malayalam: the language of Kerala, in southwest India. It’s a proper noun, normally capitalized, so it won’t help you in Scrabble, but it is the longest palindrome in our dictionary. Its middle letter is Y. More on our 9 letter palindrome words page.
7 letters
- deified: made into a god, or worshipped as one. The middle letter is F.
- reviver: someone or something that brings a thing back to life or into use. The middle letter is I.
- rotator: something that rotates; in anatomy, a muscle that turns a body part, as in the rotator cuff of the shoulder. The middle letter is A.
These three are the longest everyday palindromes in the dictionary. See our 7 letter palindrome words for more.
6 letters
- marram: a tough grass planted to hold sand dunes in place.
- renner: an obsolete word recorded in the 1913 dictionary.
- succus: a juice, especially a plant juice used in medicine; from the Latin for “juice”.
- terret: one of the metal rings on a harness that the reins pass through.
- tirrit: a word Shakespeare gives Mistress Quickly in Henry IV, Part 2, usually read as a mangled word for a fit of fright or temper.
All five have a double letter at the center (RR, NN, CC, RR, RR). The 6 letter palindrome words page lists them on their own.
5-letter palindromes
Every 5-letter palindrome follows the pattern A-B-C-B-A: the 1st and 5th letters match, and so do the 2nd and 4th. Nine of the 20 have E in both the 2nd and 4th positions (level, refer, tenet and six others), and four have A there (carac, kayak, madam, sagas).
| Word | Meaning or note |
|---|---|
| alula | A small tuft of feathers on the “thumb” of a bird’s wing |
| anona | An old spelling of Annona, the custard-apple genus of plants |
| arara | A rare 1913 entry |
| carac | A rare 1913 entry |
| civic | Relating to a city or its citizens |
| deled | Marked for deletion by an editor (from dele, a proofreader’s mark) |
| dewed | Wet with dew |
| eirie | An old spelling of aerie, an eagle’s nest |
| kayak | A light, covered canoe |
| level | Flat and even |
| madam | A polite way to address a woman |
| minim | In music, a half note; also a tiny unit of liquid measure |
| neven | A rare 1913 entry |
| refer | To mention, or to send someone elsewhere for help |
| sagas | Plural of saga, a long story |
| sekes | A rare 1913 entry |
| solos | Plural of solo |
| tenet | A principle or belief held to be true |
| teret | A rare 1913 entry |
| welew | A rare 1913 entry |
For Wordle players: LEVEL and REFER are the only two that appear on our list of 472 common 5-letter words (words that are also among the 3,000 most common in English). CIVIC, KAYAK, MADAM and TENET are everyday words too. Eirie also shows up in our list of 5-letter words with the most vowels, since four of its five letters are vowels. The full set is on our 5 letter palindrome words page.
4-letter palindromes
There are ten, and every one has a double letter in the middle:
- abba: an Aramaic word for “father”, used in the New Testament
- amma: a rare 1913 entry
- anna: a former coin of India, worth one-sixteenth of a rupee
- deed: an action; also a legal document
- lool: a rare 1913 entry
- noon: midday
- otto: an old spelling of attar, a perfume oil made from roses
- peep: a quick look, or a small high sound
- poop: the raised deck at the back of a ship
- toot: a short blast on a horn
Browse them with definitions on our 4 letter palindrome words page.
3-letter palindromes
Three-letter palindromes make up just over half the list. They all take the form X-Y-X, so the only question is which letter goes on the outside. Here they are grouped that way:
| Pattern | Count | Words |
|---|---|---|
| A_A | 7 | aga, aha, ala, ana, ara, asa, ava |
| E_E | 7 | eke, eme, ere, ese, eve, ewe, eye |
| O_O | 2 | oho, ojo |
| B_B | 3 | bib, bob, bub |
| D_D | 3 | dad, did, dod |
| G_G | 3 | gag, gig, gog |
| H_H | 1 | hah |
| M_M | 2 | mam, mum |
| N_N | 4 | nan, nin, non, nun |
| P_P | 4 | pap, pip, pop, pup |
| S_S | 1 | sis |
| T_T | 4 | tat, tit, tot, tut |
Twenty-five of the 41 are consonant-vowel-consonant, like pop and dad. The other 16 are vowel-consonant-vowel, and they lean heavily on A and E: seven start and end with A, seven with E. No 3-letter palindrome in the dictionary starts and ends with I or U. Our 3 letter palindromes page has the full list with meanings.
Fun facts from the list
- Even-length palindromes always have a double letter in the middle. The two halves mirror each other, so the two center letters must match. All 15 of the 4- and 6-letter palindromes show it, from abba to tirrit. Our guide to words with double letters explains which doubles are common and which never occur.
- Odd-length palindromes turn on a single letter. Malayalam and kayak both pivot on Y; deified pivots on F.
- A is the most common first (and last) letter, starting 13 of the 80 palindromes, ahead of T (9) and E (8).
- Some famous palindromes are missing. Racecar is usually written as two words, race car, so it isn’t a single dictionary entry. Radar wasn’t coined until 1940. Redder is a comparative form, which dictionaries don’t list as a separate headword.
- Whole sentences can be palindromes if you ignore spaces and punctuation, the best known being “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.” Our 80 words are the building blocks puzzle-makers start from.