rival

The filled squares are the 2 vowels — 2 of 5 letters. In the size-ranked list, rival sits in the everyday tier.

Letters

58,636 words share the length

Syllables

2stress on the first

Anagrams

1viral

One letter away

2riyal, nival

• adjectiveas a rival in a competition
• nounthe contestant you hope to defeat
• verbbe equal to in quality or ability

The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary reads it as r ay1 v ah0 l — 2 syllables, the stress on syllable 1.

4 words share everything from the last stressed vowel on — that is what counts as a rhyme here.

• arrival
• revival
• survival
• archival

One other word use exactly these letters: viral.

The whole set on one page.

• riyal
• nival

Same length, one position changed. <1% of the 8,636 words this long are a neighbour.

• 5 letter words8,636
• Starts R10,159
• Starts RI613
• Ends L
• 5 letters starting R

Tier: everyday. The tiers come from the English Speller Database and rank by list size, not by how often a word is used — see where the words come from.