The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SHOULD
Definition of SHOULD
verb
simple past of shall
SHALL
verb
Used before a verb to indicate the simple future tense in the first person singular or plural.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English scholde, from Old English sċolde, first and third person preterite form of sċulan (“should,” “have to,” “to owe”), the ancestor of English shall. By surface analysis, shall + -ed. Cognate with German sollte, Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌿𐌻𐌳𐌰 (skulda), Swedish skulle. Related to Middle English shild and shildy. The loss of /l/ in this word is probably due to weak stress, as in would and could (though in the latter, the /l/ was due to the analogy of the former two).
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Old English
- Middle English
- English
2 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
6th
of 58 source languages in OUTLIER
4.2%
of traced words share this origin (1,197)
branch · 22.4% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, SHOULD · 1 relative in the game
Its etymology also names German, 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.
SHOULD in OUTLIER
It has fitted 1 board so far. 62 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 76, 4 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 66 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 12, 1 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
SHOULD starts with S and ends with D. Sorted, its letters read DHLOSU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Words that start SHOULD
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found SHOULD?
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 76 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER