The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
FOWL
Definition of FOWL
noun
Any bird.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English foul, foghel, fowel, fowele, from Old English fugol (“bird”), from Proto-West Germanic *fugl, from Proto-Germanic *fuglaz, dissimilated variant of *fluglaz (compare Old English flugol ‘fleeing’, Mercian fluglas heofun ‘birds of the air’), from *fleuganą (“to fly”). Cognate with West Frisian fûgel, Low German Vagel, Dutch vogel, German Vogel, Swedish fågel, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk fugl. Doublet of voël. More at fly.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
3 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
6th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
4.7%
of traced words share this origin (3,672)
branch · 22.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, FOWL · 5 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish.
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
FOWL in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 41 boards so far. 69 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 8, 29 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 149, 16 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 6 days.
First found by a player on Day 8, 29 May 2026.
Built from these letters
FOWL starts with F and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read FLOW - 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 FOWL
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found FOWL?
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 8 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER