3 letter words with Z

Our dictionary holds 45 3 letter words with z, all exactly 3 letters long. The highest-scoring of them is ZZZ, worth 30 points in Scrabble.

More of these words begin with Z than any other letter — 23 of them, about 51% of the list.

4 appear in the 20,000 most common English words (9%), including zip, biz, zoo, cuz; the remaining 41 are rarer finds that still count as valid plays.