What Is a Pangram?
A pangram is a sentence, phrase, or word that uses every letter of a given alphabet at least once. The most famous English example is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
Pangram, defined
A pangram (from the Greek pan gramma, “every letter”) is any text that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet at least once. Designers use them to show every letter of a typeface, and word-game fans hunt for them as a special challenge. A pangram that uses each letter exactly once is called a perfect pangram — these are very rare (for example, “Mr Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx”).
Famous pangram examples
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
- Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
- The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
- Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
- How vexingly quick daft zebras jump!
Each of these squeezes all 26 letters into a single readable sentence — the shorter and more natural, the more impressive.
Pangrams in spelling bee games
In a seven-letter spelling bee, “pangram” means something slightly different: a word that uses all seven of the puzzle's letters at least once. Every HiveWords board contains at least one, and finding it earns a big bonus. Want help spotting it? Use our pangram finder — enter your seven letters and it lists every word that uses them all.
How to find pangrams faster
- Start with the rare letters. Pangrams usually lean on uncommon letters, so place a J, V, Y, or K first and build around them.
- Think in word shapes. Long words and compounds are more likely to sweep in all the letters.
- Use every letter once mentally, then look for a word that ties them together.