The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
TALK
Definition of TALK
verb
To communicate, usually by means of speech.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English talken, talkien, from Old English *tealcian (“to talk, chat”), from Proto-West Germanic *talkōn, from Proto-Germanic *talkōną (“to talk, chatter”), frequentative form of Proto-Germanic *talōną (“to count, recount, tell”), from Proto-Indo-European *dol-, *del- (“to aim, calculate, adjust, count”), equivalent to tell + -k. Cognate with Low German taalken (“to chatter, gossip, talk”). Related also to Bavarian zoin (“to pay”), Cimbrian zaln (“to pay”), Dutch talen (“to care, long; to speak; to say”), German zahlen (“to pay”), Mòcheno zoln (“to pay”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål tale (“to talk, speak”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Swedish tala (“to speak, talk”), Norwegian Nynorsk tala (“to speak, talk”); also Latin dolus (“deceit, deception, fraud, guile, treachery, trickery; malice; artifice, device, stratagem”), Ancient Greek δόλος (dólos, “deceit, trick; wiles; bait”), Armenian տող (toġ, “line (in a text)”). More at tale. Despite the surface similarity, unrelated to Proto-Indo-European *telkʷ- (“to talk”) (due to Grimm's law), which is the source of loquacious.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
2nd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
14.2%
of traced words share this origin (11,575)
How it is built
Same root, TALK · 12 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Ancient Greek, Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Latin, Norwegian, Swedish.
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
TALK in OUTLIER
It has fitted 4 boards so far. 18 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 117, 14 September 2026. The most recent board was Day 160, 27 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 4 days.
First found by a player on Day 23, 12 June 2026.
Built from these letters
TALK starts with T and ends with K. Sorted, its letters read AKLT - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Words that start TALK
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found TALK?
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 117 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER