Part two of a twenty-six part series.
Words we already knew
| BAD | BEG | BOA | BRO |
| BAE | BEL | BOB | BRR |
| BAG | BET | BOD | BUB |
| BAN | BIB | BOG | BUD |
| BAP | BID | BOP | BUG |
| BAR | BIG | BOT | BUM |
| BAT | BIN | BOW | BUN |
| BAY | BIO | BOX | BUS |
| BED | BIT | BOY | BUT |
| BEE | BIZ | BRA | BUY |
| BYE |
BEL of course, being 10 decibels.
Words we already knew because they are plurals of a two-letter word
| BAS | BIS | BOS | BYS |
More mouth sounds!
| BAA | BAH | BOH# | BOO |
Easy loan words
| BAO# | Chinese steamed bun |
| BAW# | Scots for “ball” |
| BEN | Scottish mountain peak (as in Ben Nevis) |
| BES | Another Hebrew letter. The second of the alphabet, also BETH (plural is BESES) |
| BEY | Turkish governor |
| BOK# | Africaans for an antelope, as in Springbok, Reebok. Like buck. |
Words that were new to me
| BAC# | Baccalaureate, a university degree |
| BAL | A type of shoe, from “Balmoral”. Detailed shoe nerdery at this guide. |
| BAM | To hoax. Possibly from “bamboozle”. Current in the early 18th century. Also as a noun in the Scots sense. |
| BEZ# | The second tine of a deer’s horn. Not in the OED, but Google Books is convincing. |
| BOI# | In various contexts, an alternative spelling of “boy”. |
| BON# | Good, adj. Literally French again, but part of multiple naturalized phrases. I’m sure I read somewhere that that qualified things for inclusion. I’m choosing to believe BONIER and BONIEST wouldn’t be valid if BONY wasn’t a word. |
| BOR# | A form of address for a neighbour, formerly used in East Anglian dialect. |
| BRU# | Like BRO, but more South African. Some examples |
| BUR | Variant of BURR, in many of its meanings, including as a rough edge, or the act of removing a rough edge. |
Top 5 4 sketchy inclusions:
None of these seem as bad as the bad A words.
- BES should be dropped in favour of BETH, we don’t need two competing transliterations for the Hebrew letters. (But this will also cost some useful 2-letter words, so I’m happy to let it slide.)
- BOH is every day losing ground to DOH, but Francis Beaumont has won me round to it:

- BOR might be the most obscure, but it has citations from the 19th century.
- BUR is usually a spelling error
Good job, B words