The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
AUNT
Definition of AUNT
noun
The sister or sister-in-law of one’s parent.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English aunte, from Anglo-Norman aunte, from Old French ante, from Latin amita (“father's sister”). Displaced native Middle English modrie (“aunt”) (from Old English mōdriġe (“maternal aunt”); compare Old English faþu, faþe (“paternal aunt”)). The digraph ⟨au⟩ representing /æ ~ ɑː/ (rather than /ɔː/) is irregular. It likely reflects a development of Middle English /au̯/ to [aː~æː] before /m n/ in some varieties of Early Modern English, which later came to be identified with either /æ/ or [æː] from pre-fricative lengthening (in the latter case, creating a phoneme /æː/; this is the basis of the bath lexical set). Such pronunciations historically competed with more learned ones where /au̯/ underwent its normal development to /ɔː/, with the standard language eventually adopting /æ ~ ɑː/ in words that came to be spelt with ⟨a⟩ and /ɔː/ in those which came to be spelt with ⟨au⟩ except in this word. However, dialects may have /æ/ or /ɑː/ in other words such as launch, especially in the UK. An alternative explanation derives /æ ~ ɑː/ in this word (and other instances of bath before /m n/) from a collateral Middle English form with /a/, which would've undergone lengthening before nasals analogous to that occuring before fricatives. Though such a collateral form may be ancestral to pronunciations with /a ~ æ/ in some varieties, this hypothesis cannot explain why inherited instances of bath before /m n/ only derive from Middle English words which had variants in /au̯m au̯n/.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
AUNT in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 3 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 26, 15 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 99, 27 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 10 days.
First found by a player on Day 26, 15 June 2026.
Built from these letters
AUNT starts with A and ends with T. Sorted, its letters read ANTU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
2 other words use exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start AUNT
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 26
Could you have found AUNT?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 26 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER