3 letter words with EL

Our dictionary holds 17 3 letter words with el, all exactly 3 letters long. The highest-scoring of them is ZEL, worth 12 points in Scrabble.

More of these words begin with E than any other letter — 8 of them, about 47% of the list.

8 appear in the 20,000 most common English words (47%), including tel, del, gel, mel, elk; the remaining 9 are rarer finds that still count as valid plays.