What are some good charade words?

Words that contain a movement: sneezing, fishing, juggling, swimming, riding a bike. Nouns work when they have a shape a body can make, like elephant, umbrella or ladder, and fail when they do not, like justice or opinion.

What are the hardest charades words?

Abstract nouns with no physical component at all: democracy, inflation, evolution, karma, nostalgia, photosynthesis. There is nothing to point at and no single gesture that means them, so the actor has to build a whole scene that implies the idea.

How many words do you need for charades?

About thirty for an hour with six players, allowing for skips and repeats. Rather than counting them out, use a generator that removes each word after it is played so you never repeat one and never run out halfway through a round.

What are good charades words for kids?

Things a child has personally seen or done: monkey, penguin, firefighter, brushing your teeth, eating ice cream. Avoid titles, abstract ideas, and anything that needs reading skill. There are forty clean ones on this page.

Can I print these charades words?

Yes. Every list here is real text, not an image, so you can select a section, print the page, and cut between the lines. No download, no email address, and no signup. Two columns in landscape fits about forty words per sheet.

What is the difference between charades words and charades ideas?

Words are single things to act out, like elephant or sneezing, so nobody is disadvantaged by what they have or have not watched. Ideas are usually titles and topics, like films, songs, and famous people, which need shared cultural knowledge but produce bigger reactions.

PARTY GAMES · CHARADES

275 charades words, from easy to genuinely hard

PUBLISHED JUL 26 · 2026 DATA REFRESHED AT EACH BUILD

By the PlaySpinWheel editorial team

275 charades words by difficulty: easy, hard, animals, actions, food, sports and a clean kids set.

Charades words are single words or short actions rather than titles, which makes them the fairest way to play: nobody is punished for not having seen a film. Here are 275 charades words sorted into easy, animals, actions, food, sports, a hard set, and a clean kids set.

Every word below was picked because a person can act it out in a living room without props, and every one of them is also in the generator, so you can read the list or have it dealt to you.

What are some good words for charades?

Good words for charades share one property: they contain a movement. Sneezing, fishing, juggling and swimming all start acting themselves the moment you read them. Nouns work when they have a shape a body can make (elephant, umbrella, ladder) and fail when they do not (justice, Tuesday, opinion). That single filter removes about ninety percent of the ten-thousand-word lists floating around, which is why those lists are so frustrating to play with.

The second filter is length. A word you can act in one continuous gesture beats a phrase that has to be broken into three parts, especially with a clock running. Keep the multi-part phrases for the hard round, where the struggle is the entertainment.

Easy charades words

These are the words to start a game with, and the ones to hand to whoever is acting first. Each is a single everyday action that a nervous player can begin miming instantly, which is what makes the first round work instead of dying in silence. Forty easy charades words:

Brushing your teeth
Sneezing
Tying a shoelace
Riding a bike
Swimming
Eating spaghetti
Reading a book
Taking a photo
Sleeping
Laughing
Driving a car
Washing dishes
Playing guitar
Jumping rope
Climbing a ladder
Blowing out candles
Opening an umbrella
Painting a wall
Fishing
Dancing
Typing
Waving goodbye
Drinking a milkshake
Putting on socks
Flying a kite
Shivering
Carrying heavy bags
Cutting hair
Making a snowman
Knocking on a door
Watering plants
Rowing a boat
Playing piano
Hanging laundry
Stirring a pot
Tripping over
Blowing a bubble
Putting on lipstick
Scratching an itch
Clapping

Hard charades words

Hard charades words are abstract nouns and multi-step ideas: things with no obvious shape, where the actor has to build the meaning out of several separate mimes and hope the team follows. Gravity, jet lag, a job interview. These are for the group that has played all evening and started guessing correctly in four seconds. Forty-five of them:

Gravity
Time travel
Deja vu
Homesickness
Jealousy
Democracy
Inflation
Evolution
Photosynthesis
Recycling
Writers block
A midlife crisis
Stage fright
Culture shock
Beginners luck
The internet
Artificial intelligence
Social media
A group chat
Autocorrect
Jet lag
A hangover cure
Spring cleaning
A fire drill
A power cut
Rush hour
A parking ticket
A job interview
A tax return
A surprise party
Winning the lottery
Losing your passport
Missing a flight
Assembling flat-pack furniture
Reading the instructions last
A haunted house
An alien invasion
The Big Bang
Climate change
A black hole
Karma
Nostalgia
Peer pressure
Procrastination
Optimism

A warning worth taking seriously: two hard words in a row will kill the mood. Slot one into every fifth or sixth round as a spike, keep the rest easy or medium, and the hard ones land as a highlight rather than a wall.

What are the charades hardest words?

From the set above, the genuine charades hardest words are the ones with no physical component at all. Democracy, inflation, evolution, karma, nostalgia, and photosynthesis are the six that most reliably defeat a good team, because there is nothing to point at and no single gesture that means them. The only way through is to act a scene that implies the idea, which takes the full sixty seconds and usually ends in an argument about whether the guess was close enough.

If you are deliberately building a hard round, mix three abstract nouns with three multi-step everyday situations (assembling flat-pack furniture, missing a flight, a surprise party). The everyday ones are hard for a completely different reason, and alternating the two types keeps the team from settling into one strategy.

Charades words: animals

Animals are the most reliable bank in the game and the one to fall back on whenever a round has gone flat. Everyone already knows the shape, small children can play on equal terms with adults, and the mime is physical enough to be funny from across a room. Forty-five animal charades words:

Elephant
Giraffe
Monkey
Penguin
Kangaroo
Snake
Crocodile
Frog
Owl
Eagle
Shark
Octopus
Crab
Jellyfish
Dolphin
Horse
Cow
Pig
Sheep
Chicken
Cat
Dog
Mouse
Rabbit
Squirrel
Bear
Lion
Tiger
Wolf
Fox
Spider
Butterfly
Bee
Ant
Worm
Turtle
Sloth
Flamingo
Peacock
Camel
Bat
Gorilla
Hippopotamus
Rhinoceros
Ostrich

Charades words: actions

Actions are the purest form of the game, because the word is already a verb and there is nothing to translate. This bank also produces the fastest rounds on this page, which makes it the right choice when you have a big group and want everyone to get a turn. Forty-five action words:

Juggling
Boxing
Skateboarding
Surfing
Skiing
Ice skating
Bowling
Golfing
Archery
Weightlifting
Sneezing
Yawning
Snoring
Coughing
Shivering
Threading a needle
Wrapping a present
Blowing up a balloon
Licking an envelope
Shuffling cards
Changing a tire
Mowing the lawn
Vacuuming
Ironing a shirt
Folding laundry
Taking a selfie
Scrolling a phone
Answering a video call
Charging a phone
Losing your keys
Parallel parking
Missing the bus
Waiting in a queue
Checking your watch
Running late
Whispering a secret
Winning a race
Losing a game
Getting a haircut
Getting a shot
Walking a dog that pulls
Carrying a full cup of coffee
Stepping on a plug
Reaching a top shelf
Opening a jar

Charades words: food and sports

Two banks that work for the same reason: everybody has personally done the thing. Eating a lemon, burning your mouth on pizza, missing a penalty. Thirty food words:

Spaghetti
Pizza
Hamburger
Hot dog
Taco
Sushi
Popcorn
Ice cream cone
Birthday cake
Doughnut
Banana
Watermelon
Pineapple
Corn on the cob
Lemon
Soup
Cereal
Pancakes
Fried egg
Toast
Coffee
Bubble tea
Milkshake
Lollipop
Chewing gum
Spicy chili
Melting chocolate
Sticky toffee
A too-hot drink
A very crunchy chip

And thirty sports, which are the loudest words on the page and the best choice for a room that has been sitting down too long:

Football
Basketball
Baseball
Tennis
Golf
Swimming
Boxing
Wrestling
Gymnastics
Volleyball
Cricket
Rugby
Hockey
Badminton
Table tennis
Skiing
Snowboarding
Surfing
Skateboarding
Rock climbing
Marathon running
High jump
Long jump
Javelin
Discus
Horse riding
Cycling
Rowing
Fencing
Karate

The generator removes each word as it is played, so nothing repeats:

Deal a random charades word →

Charades words for kids

Words for a children's game need one extra property beyond being actable: the child has to have personally seen or done the thing. A monkey, a firefighter, brushing your teeth. Titles, abstractions, and anything requiring reading skill are out. Forty clean charades words for kids:

Monkey
Elephant
Penguin
Butterfly
Dinosaur
Frog
Snake
Rabbit
Kangaroo
Bumblebee
Brushing your hair
Eating ice cream
Riding a scooter
Building a sandcastle
Popping bubbles
Blowing out birthday candles
Playing hide and seek
Skipping
Tickling someone
Hugging a teddy bear
Pirate
Astronaut
Firefighter
Wizard
Superhero
Ballerina
Clown
Cowboy
Robot
Mermaid
Brushing a dog
Sweeping the floor
Making a bed
Feeding a baby
Tying a balloon
Rain
Thunderstorm
A rocket taking off
A tree in the wind
Melting ice cream

For a game that deals only from vetted, pre-read banks, the charades generator for kids exists so a parent or teacher never has to check what comes next.

Words for the game of charades: how to pick a set

Choosing words for the game of charades is really choosing a difficulty curve. Open with easy words so the first actor succeeds and the room relaxes. Move to animals and actions once people are laughing. Bring in food and sports when energy dips, because both get people out of their chairs. Save four or five hard words for the last twenty minutes, when the team is confident enough to enjoy losing.

CHARADES GAME WORDS: WHICH SET TO USE WHEN
SET	WORDS	DIFFICULTY	USE IT WHEN
Easy	40	Easy	One clear action or object each. The round nobody loses.
For kids	60	Easy	Vetted for ages 4 to 10: no reading skill needed, nothing scary.
Animals	45	Easy	The reliable warm-up bank: every player already knows the shape.
Actions	45	Easy	Verbs only. The purest form of the game and the fastest rounds.
Sports	30	Easy	Games and moves. Loud rounds, big gestures, zero ambiguity.
Food	30	Easy	Eat it, cook it, or spill it. Good for hungry, restless tables.
Hard mode	45	Hard	Abstract nouns and multi-step ideas. For teams that got too good.

Great words for charades: the shortlist

If you only want ten, these are the great words for charades that almost never fail, pulled from every set above. They cover a range of difficulty, they suit any age, and each one has produced a laugh in a room at some point tonight:

Sneezing
Riding a bike
Elephant
Fishing
Eating spaghetti
Juggling
Penguin
Wrestling a fitted sheet
Parallel parking
Gravity

Note how the difficulty climbs down the list. That ordering is the whole trick: the first six get the room warm, the last four are where the evening actually happens.

Printable charades words

Every list on this page is real text rather than an image, so printing it needs no download, no email address, and no signup: select the section you want, print the page, and cut between the lines. Landscape orientation at two columns gets roughly forty words onto a single sheet, which is one full game night.

If you would rather not cut anything up, put the generator on a phone in the middle of the table instead. It deals the same words, removes each one after it is played so nothing repeats, and keeps working when the wifi does not.

How do you make charades cards?

Fold a sheet of paper into eighths, write one word per rectangle, tear along the folds, and drop them into a bowl. It takes four minutes and it is still the best physical version of this game, because pulling a slip out of a bowl is more satisfying than tapping a screen. Write on the back so nobody reads through the paper, and keep two bowls if you are running easy and hard rounds side by side.

Want the titles rather than single words? The charades ideas list covers movies, TV shows, songs, books, famous people, and jobs. For a funnier game, there are 85 funny charades ideas, and if the rules are the thing being argued about, how to play charades has the scoring and the hand signals.

Fair questions

What are some good charade words?: Words that contain a movement: sneezing, fishing, juggling, swimming, riding a bike. Nouns work when they have a shape a body can make, like elephant, umbrella or ladder, and fail when they do not, like justice or opinion.
What are the hardest charades words?: Abstract nouns with no physical component at all: democracy, inflation, evolution, karma, nostalgia, photosynthesis. There is nothing to point at and no single gesture that means them, so the actor has to build a whole scene that implies the idea.
How many words do you need for charades?: About thirty for an hour with six players, allowing for skips and repeats. Rather than counting them out, use a generator that removes each word after it is played so you never repeat one and never run out halfway through a round.
What are good charades words for kids?: Things a child has personally seen or done: monkey, penguin, firefighter, brushing your teeth, eating ice cream. Avoid titles, abstract ideas, and anything that needs reading skill. There are forty clean ones on this page.
Can I print these charades words?: Yes. Every list here is real text, not an image, so you can select a section, print the page, and cut between the lines. No download, no email address, and no signup. Two columns in landscape fits about forty words per sheet.
What is the difference between charades words and charades ideas?: Words are single things to act out, like elephant or sneezing, so nobody is disadvantaged by what they have or have not watched. Ideas are usually titles and topics, like films, songs, and famous people, which need shared cultural knowledge but produce bigger reactions.