What’s the Least Commonly Used Letter in the Alphabet?
Posted by Sia on July 14, 2026, 12:54 am ADMIN
Sia: Before you read this, think to yourself which letter YOU think is the least often used in the alphabet? (in English)
After reading it, did you guess correctly? I did not. I guessed the letter that is actually the second least used letter in the alphabet.
What’s the Least Commonly Used Letter in the Alphabet?
Of the 26 letters in the English alphabet, which one do you think is used the least? Let’s explore how the experts — including statisticians and Scrabble enthusiasts — have tried to answer this question.
by Rachel Gresh
With over a million English words, all of the letters in the alphabet get plenty of use. But some letters will be played first in Wordle and called out on Wheel of Fortune, while other letters are known to be uncommon. But which is the least commonly used of all? The answer can vary based on the criteria. Are we counting all dictionary entries in history or only those currently in use? Are we focusing on written or spoken language? These questions and more influence the outcome, but let’s turn to the experts to get some answers.
In an analysis of the approximately 240,000 entries in the 11th edition of theConcise Oxford English Dictionary, the letter “Q” was the least used, appearing in only 0.1962% of entries. The second-least-used letter was “J,” followed by “Z,” “X,” and “V,” in that order. On the other end of the spectrum, “E” was the most common letter, showing up in over 11% of entries. Still, this doesn’t necessarily mean “Q” is the least used in everyday English — especially considering the average American knows only about 42,000 words.
This brings us to a more practical (if nonacademic) source: Scrabble. The board game revolves around using letter tiles to strategically spell words on the board. Each letter is worth a certain point value, supposedly based on their rarity in English words. Any avid Scrabble player knows that “Q” and “Z” are worth 10 points — the highest value in the game. This would suggest that “Q” and “Z” are the least-used letters in English, right? Maybe. But Scrabble creator Alfred Butts was hardly scientific in his approach to the point system. When crafting the game in 1938, he calculated a value for each letter by counting how many times it appeared on the front page of The New York Times. However, many critics have contested Butts’ haphazard approach.
To challenge this outdated system, Scrabble enthusiast Joshua Lewis developed a program called “Valett,” which recalculates the letter values based on three criteria: their frequency in English, their frequency by word length (how many times a letter appears in words of different lengths), and how easy it is to play that letter with other letters. Based on Lewis’ findings, several letters would lose value — “Z,” for example, would be worth only six points, suggesting that it isn’t as rare as it seems. However, Lewis kept “Q” as the highest-scoring letter. He even suggested increasing its score to 12 because of its extreme rarity.
So, there you have it: According to statistics and Scrabble aficionados, “Q” may indeed be the least commonly used letter in the English alphabet.
You know I may not follow rules of convention. There are Greek and Russian letters for sounds in our language but not represented by letters in our alphabet. The Russian letter for "shzh" ж You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
Linotype machines, I'm told, had a special little keypad with only those letters in it; if they had empty space to fill they'd just type those in. People reading papers would ask 'what's this etaoin shrdlu mean?'
Of course Wordle loves to put in words which avoid as many common letters as possible.. SAY ‘NO’ TO WAR! RESIST!
J simply because I know that it's the least used letter in the 2300+ Wordle solutions according to its creator. I read that years ago and it stuck with me because J & K are my personal favorite letters.
on July 14, 2026, 12:54 am
