If you really sit and think about it, how many words with double letters can you think of from your memory alone? Double-letter words are words which contain at least one set of letters used twice consecutively to make a certain sound, usually used in the emphasis syllable in the word which contains them.
Did you even realize that to this point you’ve already read seven double letter words since you started reading this? Does that make you happy, or do you simply think it’s silly? After realizing just how common they can be, you’d probably be surprised to see the list of words that you use in your everyday communication which have double letters.
Because of the different phonetic sounds made by every letter in the English alphabet (the Spanish alphabet has its own sets of double letters to pronounce certain sounds, like aa and ll), double letters are necessary to emphasize certain sounds within words, and to ensure the word is pronounced correctly. For example, if the word letter only had one t, it would sound like a completely different word, that has a completely different meaning.
As a result, there is no size requirement for a word to contain a double letter sequence, or limit to how large a word can be. Words with double letters in the English language can range from three letters to any amount of letters. In fact, the larger the word, the better chance you’ll have of seeing at least one double letter pairing.
Let’s take a look at the different types of words that include double letters:3 letter words like all, add, bee, boo, ell, ebb, egg, fee, goo, too, tee, see, these are all double letter words.
There is a much larger number of double letter words when you add a letter to make a 4 letter word, such as ball, been, beer, beet, beep, bell, boom, boot, book, bull, butt, call, cell, coon, dell, doll, door, doom, fall, fell, feel, feet, foot, food, fool, fuss, full, gull, gall, hall, hell, heed, heel, hill, hull, hoop, hood, hoof, hoot, Jeff, jeep, Jill, Judd, keen, keel, keep, less, lees, Matt, mall, need, peel, pall, pool, poof, poll, poor, peek, pass, root, reel, reef, reed, roll, room, rood, sass, sell, seen, seem, seed, seek, seer, seep, soon, soot, sill, tall, tell, teen, teem, teed, Todd, tool, wall, well, watt, weed, week, and weep.
5 letter double letter words usually are heavily influenced or created solely by other languages, like latte. In most English language cases, they are simply a plural form of 4 double letter words, like weeks or tools. There are English words that are comprised of 5 letters and include double letters as well, however, such as sunny, happy, and silly.
The scope of the list of six letter words containing double letters grows exponentially because of the fact that in most cases a six letter word requires another vowel in order for the word to work in the English language. A lot of them are a different tense form of a four letter double letter word, such as called, beeped, fooled, seemed, and weeded.
There really isn’t any limit to the length of a word that can be considered a double letter word. With the amount of prefixes and suffixes in the English language, turning a simple six letter word into a much longer word with double letters become quite easy. For instance, the word communicate is a double letter word that can be made significantly longer by adding a prefix and a suffix to make a different word, like excommunication.
Now that you have had the frequency of these words brought to your attention, you can see just how often they occur in your daily communication, and why they are important to the phonetics of the English language. Words with double letters are some of the most frequently used and seldom noticed types of words that people use in every day speech, whether the communication be written or expressed verbally. Try to take note for one full day, of all of the words you use in that day that contain double letters. Chances are you’ll be surprised.