Word of the day · Thursday, October 22, 2026

louis

noun

A French gold coin, the louis d'or, first struck in 1640 under Louis XIII and minted until the Revolution. The plural is also louis.

Where it comes from

Named after the kings of France whose portraits it carried.

Worth knowing

The louis replaced the older ecu as France's main gold coin. Later gold coins of 20 francs, including the Napoleon, were still loosely called louis well into the 1900s.

By the letters

• 5letters
• 3vowels (A E I O U)
• noneuncommon letters
• 5different letters

Playing it

LOUIS has four vowels out of five letters, so it helps clear a board that is short on consonants. The -OUIS ending is unusual enough that few other words share it.

One letter away

Words you get by changing a single letter, the steps of a word ladder.

• locis
• loris
• louie
• louns
• loups
• lours
• louts

In Unsaid

LOUIS was word of the day number 4 in Unsaid, a falling-letter word game where every player gets the same word on the same date. As a word it scores 500 points. Under the current rules, spelling it as the word of the day is worth a bonus of 9,000 reading down or 6,750 reading across, before any streak. How the bonus works.