The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.

SPELUNK

/spəˈlʌŋk/7 letters

Definition of SPELUNK

noun

A cave, cavern or grotto.

Wiktionary · CC BY-SA

Other senses

SPELUNK carries 2 further meanings.

  1. verb

    To explore caves.

  2. verb

    explore natural caves

Where it comes from

From Middle English spelunke, from Old French spelonque and/or Latin spelunca, from Ancient Greek σπῆλυγξ (spêlunx, “cave”), related to σπέος (spéos). Cognates include Middle Dutch spelunke, spelonke, German Spelunke.

Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).

SPELUNK in a sentence

From Jordan Scott: “Having stuttered all of my life, blert represents a spelunk into the mouth of the stutterer, a trek across labial regions, a repel through the stalagmites of molars and canines, a lexical navigation into the cavernous poetics of what it means to stutter.”

Jordan Scott: Audio Interview, 2009

Rarity score
Withheld
Revealed only in play
Tier
Withheld
Find it yourself

OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.

SPELUNK in OUTLIER

Players have found it on 38 boards so far. 149 players have found it across Outlier's history.

Day 1Day 101
Its 38 boards, across 101 finished boards · taller bars are busier boards
38
Boards found on
19
First board
98
Latest board
11
Longest gap, days

It first turned up on Day 19, 8 June 2026. The most recent board was Day 98, 26 August 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.

First ever to find it

maddy

on Day 19, 8 June 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers

Built from these letters

SPELUNK
7
Letters
2
Vowels
5
Consonants
7
Different letters
2
Longest consonant run
1
Longest vowel run

SPELUNK starts with S and ends with K. Sorted, its letters read EKLNPSU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.

Words that start SPELUN

Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.

SPELUNKSSPELUNKEDSPELUNKERSPELUNKERSSPELUNKINGSPELUNKINGS

Could you have found SPELUNK?

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 19 - and most players walked straight past it.

Play today's OUTLIER

Share SPELUNK

The OUTLIER card for SPELUNKDownload image

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

Senses and citation via Wordnik.