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Phrase · Valid words
My phrase has a word that isn’t on the list: what that means
Recovery phrases are not written with free-form words. There is a list of exactly 2048 words, and every phrase in the world is built from them. If one of yours isn’t on the list, your phrase isn’t unusual: there is something specific to find out.
The three explanations
- A typo. By far the most common. It’s resolved by seeing which of the 2048 resembles what you wrote, and since the list words were chosen not to resemble each other, there is almost always a single candidate.
- The phrase is in another language. Official lists exist in Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese and more. If your phrase is in Spanish, the word won’t appear in the English list and the wallet will reject it. That is not an error: the wallet just needs to be told the language. I cover it in I wrote my phrase in another language.
- It isn’t that kind of phrase. Some wallets, Electrum among them, use their own system with a different list. Not fitting the standard doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
How to tell them apart in a minute
| Sign | Likely explanation |
|---|---|
| Only one word fails, the rest fit | A typo |
| Many fail and they are Spanish words | A Spanish-language phrase |
| None fit and you used Electrum | A different phrase system |
| There are 13, 15 or 17 words | Not a standard phrase; recheck the count |
Checking whether a word is on the list requires handing nothing to anyone: the list is public and lives in any wallet’s documentation. You can look it up yourself. What you must never do is type your full phrase into a website to «validate» it: that is a robbery disguised as a tool, and I explain it in the seed validator.
Why the list is built this way
The 2048 words were chosen on very deliberate criteria: none resembles another too closely, all are distinguished by their first four letters, and plurals and confusable words were avoided. The reason is precisely your situation: so that a writing error or an illegible letter can be resolved unambiguously. That design is what makes your case, almost always, fixable.