virus

The filled squares are the 2 vowels — 2 of 5 letters. In the size-ranked list, virus sits in the everyday tier.

Letters

58,636 words share the length

Syllables

2stress on the first

Anagrams

0none in this dictionary

One letter away

3varus, virls

• noun(virology) ultramicroscopic infectious agent that replicates itself only within cells of living hosts; many are pathogenic; a piece of nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) wrapped in a thin coat of protein
• nouna harmful or corrupting agency
• nouna software program capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer

The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary reads it as v ay1 r ah0 s — 2 syllables, the stress on syllable 1.

6 words share everything from the last stressed vowel on — that is what counts as a rhyme here.

• desirous
• iris
• antivirus
• retrovirus
• adenovirus
• cytomegalovirus

No other word in this dictionary uses exactly these 5 letters.

• varus
• virls
• vires

Same length, one position changed. <1% of the 8,636 words this long are a neighbour.

• 5 letter words8,636
• Starts V2,735
• Starts VI863
• Ends S
• 5 letters starting V

Tier: everyday. The tiers come from the English Speller Database and rank by list size, not by how often a word is used — see where the words come from.