Words With Friends New Words: Every Word Named So Far

Zynga announced on 8 October 2026 that Words With Friends now has over 25,000 newly playable words. It named four of them: BUZZWORTHY, BFF, DRIP and BOOKCLUB. SheKnows, citing Zynga, named 14 more. We checked all 18 against a third-party list that appears to run the updated dictionary and against ENABLE, the public word list the game was built on. Thirteen appear to be new. The other five each come with a caveat of being unconfirmed as of yet. But we are hard at work to bring accurate updates to you asap.

No full list has been published that we can find. This post will be updated as more words are confirmed.

What Zynga Announced on 8 October

Zynga announced the update through Business Wire on 8 October 2026 at 9:00 AM EDT. The same text appears on Zynga’s site under the title “Words With Friends Expands Its Dictionary with 25,000 New Words.” The company claims “over 25,000 newly playable words,” “modernized definitions,” and a new in-game word-reporting tool that lets players “flag definitions, challenge entries, and help shape the words used in the game.”

The additions fall into two groups. Pop culture terms, lifestyle words and slang (Zynga’s examples are BUZZWORTHY, BFF, DRIP and BOOKCLUB) are playable in all game modes. Competitive players get “thousands of new word additions with sharper definitions that open up high-value plays.” Zynga states: “The updated dictionary is available now in Words With Friends.”

Yaron Leyvand, Executive Vice President, Mobile Games at Zynga, said players “wanted new words, modern definitions, and a dictionary that evolves alongside them.”

The App Store listing for the game shows an in-app event card that reads “MAJOR UPDATE: More words. More ways to win.” No new app version has appeared since the announcement. The latest version, 61.01.01, is dated 30 September 2026. Players probably do not need to update the app, though Zynga has not said whether older versions receive the new words.

Sources: Zynga announcement, App Store listing.

Every New Words With Friends Word Named So Far

On 12 October 2026 we traced each of the 18 named words to the page that lists it. We then looked it up in a third-party word finder that appears to run the updated Words With Friends list, and in ENABLE. Thirteen of the words are accepted by the updated list and are absent from ENABLE. Those 13 appear to be new.

Tile value here means the most a word’s letters can score before any board bonus. It is not a guaranteed score. Values come from the Words With Friends tile values page.

Word	What it means	Tile value	Named by
BUZZWORTHY	attracting or deserving a lot of attention	29	Zynga
BOOKCLUB	book club, written as one word	23	Zynga
OBV	reads as texting shorthand for “obviously”	10	SheKnows, citing Zynga
DADROCK	dad rock, a nickname for classic rock	16	SheKnows, citing Zynga
BLACKBELT	black belt, written as one word	24	SheKnows, citing Zynga
BOGART	to use or consume without sharing; probably named after the actor Humphrey Bogart	11	SheKnows, citing Zynga
DETOXIFIER	something that detoxifies	21	SheKnows, citing Zynga
FASTFLOWING	fast-flowing, normally written with a hyphen	24	SheKnows, citing Zynga
GOALKICK	goal kick, written as one word	17 at most	SheKnows, citing Zynga
HUNGERSTRIKE	hunger strike, written as one word	22	SheKnows, citing Zynga
ICECREAM	ice cream, written as one word	17	SheKnows, citing Zynga
INNERSPACE	inner space, written as one word	18	SheKnows, citing Zynga
MUZZ	old slang: to study hard, or to confuse	16 at most	SheKnows, citing Zynga

Word statuses checked 12 October 2026.

BUZZWORTHY’s letters add up to 39 points on paper, but the game has only one Z. The second Z must be a blank worth 0, so the letters can score at most 29. MUZZ faces the same limit and tops out at 16 instead of 26. GOALKICK needs two Ks and the game has one, so it scores at most 17 instead of 22. Even with the blank, BUZZWORTHY still holds the highest tile value among the 18 named words. BLACKBELT and FASTFLOWING follow at 24.

Eight of the 13 new words are phrases normally written as two words or with a hyphen: BOOKCLUB, DADROCK, BLACKBELT, FASTFLOWING, GOALKICK, HUNGERSTRIKE, ICECREAM and INNERSPACE. A tile game has no space or hyphen, so a phrase can enter the dictionary only when closed up. Some of the “new” words have been in English for decades. Merriam-Webster dates BUZZWORTHY to 1980. Words With Friends launched in 2009. The 13 new words represent 0.052 percent of the 25,000 Zynga announced, or fewer than one in a thousand.

When we ran the checks, the closed-up phrases stood out immediately. More than half the new words on the list are ordinary two-word expressions written without a break.

Sources: SheKnows, Merriam-Webster on buzzworthy.

Five Named Words That Come With a Caveat

Five of the 18 named words are not straightforward additions.

• BFF (tile value 12). A 2017 VOA Learning English report listed BFF among words being added that year, along with delish, hangry, bae and bestie. Zynga’s 2026 announcement names BFF again. Zynga has not said whether BFF left the game at some point and returned, or whether the 2026 change gives it a new definition.
• DRIP (tile value 8). The word is in ENABLE, so it was almost certainly playable before the update. The change is likely a new definition. Merriam-Webster records the slang sense “a fashionable style or look.”
• SQUAD (tile value 16). Also in ENABLE and almost certainly playable already. The update probably supplies the slang sense of one’s friend group.
• GASTRONOMY (tile value 18). Present in ENABLE and almost certainly playable before. The update is likely a sharper definition of “the art or science of good eating.”
• SIDEEYE (tile value 10). SheKnows lists it as new, citing Zynga, but the updated third-party list rejected it on 12 October 2026 in two separate checks. It may be pending, it may appear in another form, or the list we checked may lag behind the game.

ENABLE makes the pre-update status of DRIP, SQUAD and GASTRONOMY very likely but cannot prove it. Zynga has not published its own definitions. For more on how Words With Friends and Scrabble differ in their word lists, see our Scrabble vs Words With Friends post.

Sources: VOA Learning English 2017 report, Merriam-Webster on drip, Merriam-Webster on side-eye.

No Full List Has Been Published Yet

Zynga named four words and linked no list. Its support note about valid words that stopped working dates the dictionary update to 7 October 2026, the day before the announcement. The note says some valid words stopped working after a recent game-wide dictionary update, that the team has restored most of the affected words, and that it is actively working on restoring definitions. The note was still being edited on 12 October 2026. Because the dictionary is still changing, any list published now, including the table above, is a dated snapshot.

A third-party comparison has produced a larger figure; that report appears in the next section. Our own Words With Friends tools don’t have the new words yet. We’re updating our word list and will add them as we verify them. For everyday play with the current list, the Words With Friends cheat finds playable words from your letters, and the Words With Friends board solver suggests moves for a whole board.

Background on the game’s original word list is on Wikipedia. The support note is at Zynga’s help centre: invalid words after the dictionary update.

Reported, Not Confirmed by Zynga

A word-game site, wordswithfriendscheat.io, compared the old and new lists and reported on 9 October 2026 that 33,182 words were added. That is about 8,000 more than Zynga’s headline of “over 25,000,” a figure the announcement’s wording allows. The site published 40 example words and no full list. Zynga has not confirmed the count.

Three of its example additions were reported in the game years earlier: SELFIE, which a VOA report says was added in 2014, and BFF and BAE, which both appear in VOA’s 2017 list. The comparison’s total may therefore include words that left the game and returned, or it may start from an older list than the one players had immediately before the update.

14 Two-Letter Words Reported as New

The same comparison names 14 newly added two-letter words: EE, EO, EW, FU, IO, JA, JE, OK, OO, OU, PO, TE, VU, YI. None of the 14 is in ENABLE. All 14 were accepted by the updated third-party list on 12 October 2026, which suggests they are playable now. Zynga has not confirmed that any of them is new.

Tile values, highest first:

• JA 11
• JE 11
• VU 7
• FU 6
• OK 6
• EW 5
• PO 5
• YI 4
• OU 3
• EE 2
• EO 2
• IO 2
• OO 2
• TE 2

JA and JE lead because the J alone is worth 10.

How to Check a Word Right Now

Until Zynga publishes a full list, the game itself is the final check. Words With Friends rejects any word that is not in its dictionary. Zynga’s new reporting tool lets players “flag definitions” and “challenge entries.” Third-party lists, including ours, may disagree with the game for a while.

For everyday play with the list we currently hold, the Words With Friends cheat remains useful. Word lists also differ between games; our Crossplay vs Scrabble post covers those differences. We will update the table and the “Word statuses checked” date each time more words are confirmed.

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