The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
WALK
Definition of WALK
verb
To move on the feet by alternately setting each foot (or pair or group of feet, in the case of animals with four or more feet) forward, with at least one foot on the ground at all times. Compare run.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English walk, walke, walken, walkyn, wolken (“to roll, toss, or turn; to walk; to move; to be living; to beat or full; to perform”), a conflation of Old English wealcan (“to move around; to revolve; to roll; to fluctuate; to discuss”) (ġewealcan (“to go, traverse; to roll”)) and Old English wealcian (“to curl, roll up, twist; to wrinkle”); both from Proto-West Germanic *walkan, from Proto-Germanic *walkaną (“to roll, toss, turn, wind; to walk, wander, wend; to full, trample”), *walkōną (“to roll about; to full”), from Proto-Indo-European *walg- (“to twist, turn, move”). Cognate with Bavarian woikn (“to full, tan; to knead dough; to roll out dough”), Cimbrian balchan (“to beat, hit, strike”), Dutch zwalken (“to walk around”), German walken (“to full, tan, walk; to knead; to beat up”), Danish valke (“to full, walk, waulk”), Faroese válka (“make dirty; stir up dirt”), Swedish valka (“to full cloth, to waulk”); also Latin valgus (“bent out; bandy, bow-legged”). More at vagrant and whelk. Doublet of waulk.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
3rd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
9.1%
of traced words share this origin (2,408)
How it is built
Same root, WALK · 4 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Danish, Dutch, Latin, 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.
WALK in OUTLIER
It has fitted 35 boards so far.
It first turned up on Day 42, 1 July 2026. The most recent board was Day 130, 27 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First found by a player on Day 23, 12 June 2026.
Built from these letters
WALK starts with W and ends with K. Sorted, its letters read AKLW - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Same letters, different word
One other word uses exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start WALK
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 42
Could you have found WALK?
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 42 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER