Help > What words are allowed?
You
can't use:
- words normally written with a capital letter
- words normally written with a punctuation mark
- foreign language words (often printed in italics in a dictionary)
- plurals and verb forms made by adding S to the end of a word (unless the
puzzle was created under the Your Puzzles tab with the
option that allows all such words)
You
can use:
- British and American words and spelling
- many words regarded as dialect or specific to a particular country or region
- foreign words that have been adopted by the English language
- plurals and verb forms that are not simply "s" added to the end of the base word
- e.g. "babies", "ashes"
- words that originated as abbreviations if they are now written in
lower-case letters with no punctuation marks — for example, "indie", "scuba"
- slang and colloquial words
Chihuahua accepts a lot of extremely rare words, but you may find an obscure word in a very large dictionary that
is not permitted in the puzzle. We don't aim to include every archaic or technical word that is listed in the
multi-volume unabridged dictionaries. If you think a word ought to be allowed, send in a suggestion.
WARNING: by default, there is no expurgation of
words that might be considered offensive by some players. However, you can make
your own puzzles under the Your Puzzles tab, where there is an
option to exclude many such words.