A complete, filterable list of 25+ English words ending in -LESS — with definitions, word types, and difficulty ratings.
The "-less" suffix is the direct counterpart of "-ful." Where "-ful" adds, "-less" subtracts. Hopeful and hopeless, careful and careless, powerful and powerless — the pairings are so clean that learning one often unlocks the other. Because "-less" is purely privative (it only means without), there is little ambiguity: any "-less" word signals absence or lack.
Part of speech: Adjectives meaning "without" or "lacking" the base noun (hope → hopeless, care → careless, use → useless). Often paired with the opposite "-ful" form.
Many "-less" words appear in emotionally resonant writing because absence and negation carry weight. Describing something as "endless" or "restless" is often more powerful than any positive framing.
This list includes 25 English words ending in -less, drawn from a curated dictionary of 10,000+ words spanning everyday vocabulary, academic terms, and word-game forms. The count focuses on base forms; inflected variants (e.g. plurals or conjugations) are counted separately.
Common examples from this list include: Less. Use the difficulty filter above to browse easy, medium, or hard words separately.
Adjectives meaning "without" or "lacking" the base noun (hope → hopeless, care → careless, use → useless). Often paired with the opposite "-ful" form. Use the "Type" filter above to narrow the list to nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs specifically.
Most standard words on this list are accepted in major Scrabble dictionaries (TWL, SOWPODS). Some hard-difficulty words are archaic, borrowed, or dialect forms whose validity can vary between rulesets — always verify against the official word list for your competition or app.