3 Letter Words That Start With K

37 words in this list, every one checked against the YAWL dictionary.

Use these letters in the Word Finder to unscramble them into new words.

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3 Letter Words 37

Which of these words score the most in Scrabble?

The highest scoring words from this list, ranked by Scrabble letter values.

Browse Words by First Letter

Word Finders by Length

Holding a rack rather than browsing? Most games are won at four, six, and seven tiles, so start with the 4 Letter Word Finder, the 6 Letter Word Finder, or the 7 Letter Word Finder, then pick any other length below.

This page lists every one of the 37 three letter words that start with K. Type the letters you hold into the filter above and the list narrows instantly to the plays that fit your rack, and sort by score or alphabet whenever it helps.

The words the letter has

For a short list, K offers a lot of scoring. The everyday words lead: KEY, KID, KIT, KEG, KEN, KIN, KIP, and KIR. A cluster of KO words follows, KOA, KOB, KOI, KOP, KOR, and KOS, along with the vowel friendly KEA. The rest are the short specialist words every tile player learns, KAB, KAE, KAF, KAS, KAT, KAY, KEF, KEP, KEX, KHI, KIF, and KUE, which turn an awkward K into points.

Scoring the best three letter words starting with K

The K is worth five points on its own, so words that open with it start ahead of most short plays. KEX tops the list at 14 points, its X doing the extra work, and KAF, KAY, KEF, and KEY all reach 10. Even the plainer entries score well for three tiles, which is what makes a stranded K far less of a burden than it looks.

Short words in Scrabble

Three letter words are the workhorses of a tile game. They let you unload an awkward K, hook onto a word already on the board, and open two way scoring across a bonus square. Learning the full K set here means a K rarely sits dead on your rack, because there is almost always a legal three letter home for it, whether you hold a spare vowel or not.

How the count is made

Every figure on this page is recomputed from one pinned dictionary on each build, never written in by hand, and the list is a direct slice of that same file. That is why the count in the heading, the numbers in the copy, and the results from the filter can never disagree. If the total looks different from another site, this is the honest YAWL figure, and the dictionary page sets out the source list and its license. When you would rather rearrange a whole rack than browse by letter, send your letters to the three letter word finder.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many three letter words start with K?
There are 37 three letter words that start with K in this list, out of 1,255 three letter words in YAWL overall. Every count here is generated from the dictionary at build time, so it always matches what the filter finds.
What are some useful three letter words starting with K?
KEY, KID, KIT, KEG, KEN, KIN, and KIP are the most familiar. For a tight board the short vowel words KEA, KOA, and KOI, and the tile dumps KAB, KEF, and KUE, are worth knowing. Filter this list by the letters you hold to see only the plays that fit.
Which three letter word starting with K scores the most in Scrabble?
KEX leads at 14 points thanks to its X, and KAF, KAY, KEF, and KEY all reach 10 on the five point K. Because the K itself is heavy, almost every word on this list scores well for its length.
Why is a word I expected not on this list?
These pages are built from YAWL, a public domain list made for word games, which leaves out proper nouns, abbreviations, and hyphenated forms. Names starting with K will not appear as a result. The [dictionary page](/dictionary/) publishes the exact list, its license, and its full counts so you can check any word against the source.