• 150 words

Funny Hangman Words, From Kerfuffle to Zugzwang

Press Pick 10 new words for real words that sound made up, then choose one and draw its blanks.

Funny Hangman Words, From Kerfuffle to Zugzwang

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  1. Guffaw6 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: A loud, hearty burst of laughter.
  2. Platypus8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: An egg-laying mammal from eastern Australia with a bill like a duck.
  3. Klutz5 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: A clumsy person. The word came from Yiddish.
  4. Rapscallion11 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A mischievous rascal, in old-fashioned talk.
  5. Quibble7 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To argue over a trivial detail.
  6. Chimichanga11 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A deep-fried burrito.
  7. Fez3 letters, hard to guess, 13 misses. Clue: A flat-topped felt hat with a tassel, named after a city in Morocco.
  8. Doodlesack10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: An old word for the bagpipes, borrowed from German.
  9. Strudel7 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: A pastry of thin dough rolled around a fruit filling.
  10. Zany4 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: Comical in an odd, clownish way.

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All 150 words

Fuss and uproar 13

  • Brouhaha 8 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A noisy stir over very little. English borrowed it from French.
  • Conniption 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A fit of anger or panic.
  • Donnybrook 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A free-for-all, named after a Dublin fair held every year from 1204 into the 1800s.
  • Hootenanny 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: An informal show by folk singers where the audience joins in.
  • Hubbub 6 letters, hard to guess, 9 misses. Clue: The blur of many voices talking at once in a busy room.
  • Hullabaloo 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A loud, confused noise from an excited crowd.
  • Kerfuffle 9 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A fuss over something small, like who sat in whose chair.
  • Pandemonium 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Wild uproar. John Milton coined it for his poem Paradise Lost.
  • Ruckus 6 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: A noisy disturbance, as when the dog meets the mail carrier.
  • Rumpus 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: A rowdy commotion. Some houses have a playroom named for it.
  • Shenanigans 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Playful mischief or sneaky tricks.
  • Tizzy 5 letters, hard to guess, 10 misses. Clue: A state of nervous fluster, usually over something minor.
  • Tomfoolery 10 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: Silly behavior that gets nothing done.

Nonsense and humbug 13

  • Bafflegab 9 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Confusing official jargon. The word was coined in 1952.
  • Balderdash 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: Senseless talk or writing. Say it when you do not believe a word.
  • Claptrap 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: Empty talk. It began around 1730 as theater slang for a cheap trick to win applause.
  • Codswallop 10 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: British slang for complete nonsense.
  • Fiddlesticks 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A mild cry of disbelief. One of them is the bow used on a violin.
  • Gibberish 9 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Speech or writing that makes no sense at all.
  • Hogwash 7 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: Nonsense, and before that the kitchen scraps fed to pigs.
  • Hokum 5 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: Nonsense dressed up to look impressive.
  • Humbug 6 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: A hoax or sham. Nobody knows where the word came from.
  • Jabberwocky 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Nonsense language, from the title of a Lewis Carroll poem.
  • Piffle 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: Foolish talk not worth answering.
  • Tommyrot 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: Utter nonsense, in old British slang.
  • Twaddle 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: Silly, empty talk or writing. The dictionary dates it to 1782.

Rascals and fusspots 14

  • Bigwig 6 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: An important person. The name comes from the large wigs once worn by men of rank.
  • Blabbermouth 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Someone who cannot keep a secret.
  • Chatterbox 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A person who never stops talking.
  • Copycat 7 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: One who imitates whatever someone else does.
  • Curmudgeon 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A grump with a complaint for every occasion.
  • Fusspot 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A person who worries over tiny details.
  • Klutz 5 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: A clumsy person. The word came from Yiddish.
  • Landlubber 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A sailor's name for someone unused to the sea.
  • Nincompoop 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A silly or foolish person.
  • Rapscallion 11 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A mischievous rascal, in old-fashioned talk.
  • Slowpoke 8 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: The last one out the door, every time.
  • Spoilsport 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A person who ruins a game by refusing to play along.
  • Swashbuckler 12 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A swordsman given to showy, daring swordplay.
  • Worrywart 9 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: Someone who frets about everything that might go wrong.

Animals with odd names 14

  • Aardvark 8 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: An African burrowing mammal whose Afrikaans name means earth pig.
  • Axolotl 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A salamander with a Nahuatl name that keeps its gills and stays in the water for life.
  • Blobfish 8 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A deep-sea fish from the waters off Australia, named for its shape.
  • Bobolink 8 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A North American songbird named for the sound of its song.
  • Dodo 4 letters, hard to guess, 9 misses. Clue: A large flightless bird, related to the pigeon, extinct since the 1600s.
  • Gnu 3 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: Three letters for a wildebeest. The G is silent.
  • Kinkajou 8 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A tree-dwelling relative of the raccoon, also called the honey bear.
  • Kookaburra 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: An Australian kingfisher whose name copies its loud, laughing call.
  • Mudskipper 10 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A fish that can live in and out of the water and gets about on land by jumping.
  • Narwhal 7 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: An Arctic whale whose males carry a long spiral tusk.
  • Nudibranch 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A soft-bodied sea slug, often brightly colored.
  • Platypus 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: An egg-laying mammal from eastern Australia with a bill like a duck.
  • Quokka 6 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: A marsupial from southwestern Australia, about the size of a house cat.
  • Wildebeest 10 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: An African antelope also called the gnu.

Food with silly names 13

  • Blancmange 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A wobbly dessert of sweetened milk set with cornstarch.
  • Butterscotch 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A golden candy, and the sundae sauce that shares its flavor.
  • Chimichanga 11 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A deep-fried burrito.
  • Flapjack 8 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: A pancake, named for being flipped on the griddle.
  • Gnocchi 7 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: Small Italian dumplings made of potato or semolina. You do not hear a hard G.
  • Kipper 6 letters, hard to guess, 9 misses. Clue: A split, salted and smoked herring.
  • Kohlrabi 8 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A cabbage relative with a swollen, turnip-shaped stem.
  • Kumquat 7 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A small, orange citrus fruit native to Asia.
  • Pickle 6 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: A cucumber kept in brine, or a tricky spot to be in.
  • Pumpernickel 12 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: A dark German sourdough bread made from rye.
  • Rutabaga 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A root vegetable also called the swede or Swedish turnip.
  • Strudel 7 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: A pastry of thin dough rolled around a fruit filling.
  • Succotash 9 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A dish of corn kernels and lima beans.

Sound effects 13

  • Chortle 7 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A gleeful chuckle. Lewis Carroll coined it in a nonsense poem published in 1871.
  • Fizzle 6 letters, hard to guess, 9 misses. Clue: To hiss and sputter out, like a damp firework.
  • Guffaw 6 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: A loud, hearty burst of laughter.
  • Gurgle 6 letters, hard to guess, 9 misses. Clue: The bubbling sound of water going down a drain.
  • Honk 4 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: The sound of a goose or a car horn.
  • Kaboom 6 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: The sound of an explosion in a comic strip.
  • Oink 4 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: What a pig says.
  • Ribbit 6 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: What a frog says, at least in English.
  • Squelch 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: The sound of boots in deep mud.
  • Thwack 6 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: The sound of a hard hit with something flat.
  • Vroom 5 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: The sound of an engine revving.
  • Yodel 5 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To sing with quick jumps between a normal voice and a high one.
  • Zap 3 letters, hard to guess, 14 misses. Clue: The sound of a sudden burst of electricity.

Things to shout 13

  • Abracadabra 11 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A magician's word. Five of its eleven letters are A.
  • Ahoy 4 letters, hard to guess, 9 misses. Clue: A call to hail a ship.
  • Blimey 6 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A British cry of astonishment.
  • Crikey 6 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A cry of surprise heard in Britain and Australia.
  • Eureka 6 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: Greek for I have found it, the cry credited to Archimedes.
  • Gadzooks 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: An old-fashioned cry of surprise.
  • Gesundheit 10 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: Said after a sneeze. It was borrowed from German.
  • Huzzah 6 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: An old cheer of joy or approval, often tied to sailors.
  • Phooey 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: Said to show disgust or disbelief.
  • Pshaw 5 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: An old scoff of disbelief, five letters with one vowel.
  • Yikes 5 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: Said when something alarms you.
  • Yippee 6 letters, hard to guess, 7 misses. Clue: A shout of delight.
  • Zounds 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: A cry of shock heard in old plays.

Wiggly doing words 18

  • Bamboozle 9 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: To trick or confuse someone.
  • Bloviate 8 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: To speak at length in a pompous way. It is American, from Ohio in the 1840s.
  • Flabbergast 11 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: To astonish someone completely.
  • Flummox 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: To confuse someone completely.
  • Galumph 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: To move with heavy, clumsy steps. It first appeared in a Lewis Carroll poem.
  • Hoodwink 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: To deceive by a trick. It first meant to blindfold.
  • Hornswoggle 11 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: To cheat or swindle, a jokey American coinage from 1829.
  • Kvetch 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To complain without stopping. The word came from Yiddish.
  • Lollygag 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: To dawdle when there is work to do.
  • Mollycoddle 11 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: To pamper someone far too much.
  • Mosey 5 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To stroll along without any hurry.
  • Perambulate 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A grand word for taking a walk.
  • Quibble 7 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To argue over a trivial detail.
  • Shimmy 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To shake the shoulders back and forth in a dance.
  • Skedaddle 9 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: To run off in a hurry. The word spread during the American Civil War.
  • Slobber 7 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To let drool run from the mouth, as a happy dog does.
  • Vamoose 7 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: To leave quickly. It is an alteration of a Spanish word.
  • Waddle 6 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: To walk with short, swaying steps, as a duck does.

Gizmos and getups 14

  • Contraption 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A machine that looks complicated and none too steady.
  • Cummerbund 10 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A broad pleated sash worn around the waist with formal dress.
  • Doodad 6 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: A small object with no proper name, recorded since the 1880s.
  • Doohickey 9 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A small thing whose name you cannot recall. First recorded in 1914.
  • Fez 3 letters, hard to guess, 13 misses. Clue: A flat-topped felt hat with a tassel, named after a city in Morocco.
  • Glockenspiel 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A percussion instrument of tuned metal bars struck with mallets.
  • Gubbins 7 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: British for odds and ends of little value.
  • Jalopy 6 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: A battered old car. The first written use dates from 1924.
  • Muumuu 6 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A long, loose dress from Hawaii.
  • Pantaloons 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: An old-fashioned word for trousers.
  • Sousaphone 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A marching brass instrument that wraps around the player's body.
  • Spork 5 letters, medium to guess, 4 misses. Clue: A spoon and a fork in one. The name is a blend of the two.
  • Vuvuzela 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A long plastic horn with a loud buzz. The name comes from Zulu.
  • Whirligig 9 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: Anything that spins, such as a toy top or a garden pinwheel.

Describing words 11

  • Cantankerous 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Bad-tempered and quick to argue.
  • Gargantuan 10 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: Huge. It comes from the name of a giant in the books of Rabelais.
  • Ginormous 9 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Extremely large, a blend of gigantic and enormous.
  • Gobsmacked 10 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: British slang for utterly astonished.
  • Ornery 6 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: Stubborn and hard to deal with.
  • Rambunctious 12 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: Noisy, energetic and hard to control.
  • Snazzy 6 letters, medium to guess, 5 misses. Clue: Stylish in a flashy way.
  • Spiffy 6 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: Smart and neat in appearance.
  • Wonky 5 letters, hard to guess, 12 misses. Clue: Crooked, off-center or unsteady.
  • Woozy 5 letters, hard to guess, 11 misses. Clue: Dizzy and unsteady.
  • Zany 4 letters, hard to guess, 8 misses. Clue: Comical in an odd, clownish way.

Dictionary oddities 14

  • Absquatulate 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: To leave in a hurry, an American mock-Latin joke word of the 1830s.
  • Borborygmus 11 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: The medical word for a rumbling in the gut.
  • Bumbershoot 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A playful word for an umbrella.
  • Collywobbles 12 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: An upset stomach, or a case of nerves.
  • Doodlesack 10 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: An old word for the bagpipes, borrowed from German.
  • Gardyloo 8 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A warning cry before waste was thrown from a window, first recorded in Edinburgh in 1662.
  • Gongoozler 10 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: Someone who idly watches boats go by.
  • Humdinger 9 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: Something remarkably good. First recorded in a Montana newspaper in 1883.
  • Milquetoast 11 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A timid person, named for a comic strip character first drawn in 1924.
  • Quidnunc 8 letters, medium to guess, 3 misses. Clue: A person eager for news and gossip, from the Latin for what now.
  • Smellfungus 11 letters, easy to guess, 2 misses. Clue: A faultfinder, named for a grumbling traveler in a 1768 novel by Laurence Sterne.
  • Snollygoster 12 letters, easy to guess, 1 miss. Clue: A shrewd, unprincipled person, in old American slang.
  • Sternutation 12 letters, easy to guess, no misses. Clue: The formal word for a sneeze.
  • Zugzwang 8 letters, hard to guess, 6 misses. Clue: In chess, having to move when every move makes things worse.

How it works

Funny hangman words pay off twice: once while the blanks fill in, and again when somebody swears Codswallop is not a real word. It is. All 150 words here have a dictionary entry, and every card shows a letter count, a guess level, a miss count and a clue. Press Pick 10 new words, choose one and draw the blanks on paper.

Read the full guide

Eleven kinds of silly

The list that reads All words deals one kind of word. Fuss and uproar has Hullabaloo and Pandemonium, Rascals and fusspots has Nincompoop and Worrywart, and Things to shout runs from Gadzooks to Gesundheit. For fun hangman words the whole table has at least heard of, choose Animals with odd names or Food with silly names: Platypus, Narwhal, Flapjack, Strudel.

Short sound effects are the hard ones

Each level was measured by a test guesser (how it works). Of the 150, 64 came out easy and 37 hard. The 19 words of five letters or fewer cost 8.3 misses on average. The 52 of ten letters or more cost 1.6. Sound effects is the toughest topic, and choosing it with Hard to guess, under More filters, leaves its 8 worst, Thwack and Vroom among them. Dictionary oddities is the gentlest: 10 of its 14 scored easy.

  • Zap cost the guesser 14 misses, Fez 13 and Wonky 12, on three to five letters. Agree on the number of misses before you set one.
  • Six words cost no misses, among them Pumpernickel, Gesundheit and Rambunctious. Choose More filters and press Easy to guess for the 64 that cost two or fewer.

Questions and answers

Are these all real words?

Yes. Every word has an English entry in Wiktionary. Hornswoggle is an American coinage of 1829, Bafflegab dates from 1952, and Lewis Carroll invented Chortle and Galumph for one poem. Each is spelled as Wiktionary's main entry has it. Some have a rarer second spelling there, Huzzah as huzza and Kumquat as cumquat, so say first that the page's spelling counts.

What makes hangman words funny for adults?

Rarity. Dictionary oddities holds 14 words most grown-ups have never met, such as Borborygmus, the medical word for a rumbling gut, and Gongoozler, someone who idly watches boats. These are funny hangman words for adults in the sense of rare, not rude: every clue uses the word's everyday meaning.

Do sound effects and shouts count in hangman?

House rules differ on slang, so agree before the first word. Oink, Ribbit, Kaboom and Yikes all have dictionary entries. They are also hard to guess: Sound effects averaged 6.6 misses a word and Things to shout 5.1, against 2.0 for the oddities.

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