Word of the day · Friday, November 6, 2026
neps
noun, plural
Small knots of tangled fibers in cotton or wool that show up as specks in yarn and cloth.
Where it comes from
A 19th-century textile term of uncertain origin.
Worth knowing
Neps form when fibers are handled roughly during picking and carding. Mills count them per gram as a measure of cotton quality, and too many give fabric a speckled look after dyeing.
By the letters
- 4letters
- 1vowels (A E I O U)
- noneuncommon letters
- 4different letters
Playing it
NEPS uses the same letters as PENS, so the same four tiles can clear in two orders. It is a cheap way to spend an N, P and S at once.
Anagrams
Words that use exactly the same letters as NEPS. See anagram.
- pens
One letter away
Words you get by changing a single letter, the steps of a word ladder.
- ceps
- deps
- heps
- keps
- leps
- naps
- nebs
- neds
- negs
- neks
- ness
- nets
- news
- nips
- peps
- reps
- seps
- yeps
- zeps
In Unsaid
NEPS was word of the day number 19 in Unsaid, a falling-letter word game where every player gets the same word on the same date. As a word it scores 250 points. Under the current rules, spelling it as the word of the day is worth a bonus of 8,500 reading down or 6,375 reading across, before any streak. How the bonus works.