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To challenge this outdated system, Scrabble enthusiast Joshua Lewis developed a program called “Valett,” which recalculates the letter values based on three criteria: their frequency in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.
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