What are hard pictionary words?

Words with no obvious shape: abstract ideas like gravity or nostalgia, idioms like raining cats and dogs, and multi-word titles that have to be built picture by picture. Everyone knows what they mean, which is exactly why they are hard to draw rather than unfair.

What is the hardest word to draw in pictionary?

Abstract states with no physical consequence are the worst: patience, truth, balance. Unlike panic or jet lag, they do not make a person do anything visible, so there is nothing for the drawer to show and nothing for the guessers to read.

How do you draw an abstract word in pictionary?

Draw the consequence rather than the thing, put a stick figure's face on it, or draw the opposite and cross it out. Gravity becomes an apple falling; silence becomes a person shushing a room. Then build it in numbered parts rather than starting over.

Are phrases allowed in pictionary?

Yes, and they make the best rounds in the game. Two things make them land: ninety seconds on the clock, and committing fully to the literal picture instead of hedging toward what the saying means. Guessers translate an absurd image far faster than anyone expects.

When should you use hard words in pictionary?

Once somebody guesses a word in under ten seconds, which is the sign the easy bank has stopped working. Mix one hard word into every third round rather than switching the whole deck, so the nervous players still get a giraffe now and then.

Is an obscure word the same as a hard word?

No, and confusing the two ruins games. A hard word is one everybody knows and nobody can draw. An obscure word is one the room has never heard of, which means the round has no ending regardless of how good the drawing is.

PARTY GAMES · PICTIONARY

140 hard pictionary words that beat a good team

PUBLISHED AUG 3 · 2026 DATA REFRESHED AT EACH BUILD

By the PlaySpinWheel editorial team

140 hard pictionary words in three kinds: abstract ideas, idioms drawn literally, and titles.

Hard pictionary words are not obscure words, they are words with no obvious shape. Gravity, nostalgia, raining cats and dogs: everybody knows exactly what they mean and nobody knows where to put the pen. That gap is the entire difficulty, and it is why these rounds are the ones people talk about afterwards.

Here are 140 of them in three kinds: 55 abstract ideas, 45 phrases drawn literally, and 40 titles. Each section explains how a good drawer actually gets there, because a hard list without technique is just a list of words nobody guesses.

What makes a pictionary word hard?

There are exactly three kinds of hard in this game, and mixing them up is why most difficult word lists do not work. A word is hard when it has no shape, when its meaning fights its picture, or when it is a title that has to be built piece by piece. Obscurity is a fourth thing and it is not difficulty, it is failure: if half the room has never heard of it, the round has no ending.

THE THREE KINDS OF HARD PICTIONARY WORD
KIND	WHY IT IS HARD	HOW A GOOD DRAWER GETS THERE
Abstract idea	There is no object to draw at all	Draw the consequence, not the thing: gravity is an apple mid-fall
Idiom or phrase	The literal picture and the meaning disagree	Draw it literally and let the guessers do the translating
Title	It has several words and none can be written	Break it into words and number them on your fingers

That table is the whole page in six lines, and it is the difference between a hard round and a dead one. Everything below is 140 words sorted into those three kinds.

Hard pictionary words: abstract ideas

These are the ones that make a confident drawer put the pen down and stare. There is no object, so the only route is consequence: draw what the idea does to somebody. Panic is a face and a clock. Jet lag is a bed, a sun, and a very unhappy person. Fifty-five to use:

Gravity
Time
Silence
Memory
Luck
Freedom
Justice
Peace
Truth
Patience
Jealousy
Boredom
Panic
Relief
Nostalgia
Deja vu
Homesickness
Stage fright
Writer's block
Culture shock
Evolution
Photosynthesis
Recycling
Inflation
Democracy
Gossip
Rumor
Secret
Promise
Apology
The internet
Artificial intelligence
Social media
A group chat
Autocorrect
Jet lag
Rush hour
A power cut
A fire drill
A traffic jam
A job interview
A surprise party
A first day at school
A long goodbye
A close shave
Teamwork
Ambition
Curiosity
Loyalty
Regret
Growing up
Retirement
Rush
Balance
Chaos

A tip that turns these from impossible to merely difficult: draw the person first. Almost every abstract idea on that list becomes solvable the moment there is a stick figure reacting to it, because the guessers stop looking for a noun and start reading a situation.

A hard pictionary word list of phrases and idioms

Idioms are the best rounds in the game and it is not close. The drawer has to decide between the literal picture and the meaning, and the literal picture almost always wins, which is how you end up with a room watching somebody carefully draw cats falling out of a cloud. Forty-five idioms that all work:

Raining cats and dogs
A piece of cake
Break a leg
Under the weather
Spill the beans
Hit the hay
Cold feet
Butterflies in your stomach
A frog in your throat
All ears
Bite the bullet
Bury your head in the sand
Barking up the wrong tree
Beat around the bush
Let the cat out of the bag
The elephant in the room
A bull in a china shop
Like a fish out of water
Kill two birds with one stone
The early bird catches the worm
Cost an arm and a leg
Head over heels
On thin ice
Walking on eggshells
In hot water
Over the moon
Once in a blue moon
Reach for the stars
Chasing rainbows
Every cloud has a silver lining
When pigs fly
Hold your horses
Straight from the horse's mouth
The last straw
A needle in a haystack
Burning the midnight oil
Rolling out the red carpet
Throwing in the towel
Pulling someone's leg
Sitting on the fence
Music to my ears
A shoulder to cry on
Face the music
Break the ice
Add fuel to the fire

Two house rules make phrase rounds much better. Give them ninety seconds rather than sixty, because there is more to build. And let the drawer hold up fingers for the number of words, which is legal in every version of the game and turns a hopeless round into a solvable one.

Hard words for pictionary: film and TV titles

Titles are hard for a mechanical reason rather than a conceptual one: the drawer cannot write a single letter, so the title has to be assembled out of pictures in the right order. Up is a finger pointing at the ceiling. Back to the Future is three drawings and a lot of confidence. Forty that a general crowd will actually recognize:

Titanic
Jaws
The Lion King
Finding Nemo
Frozen
Jurassic Park
Star Wars
Harry Potter
Toy Story
Up
Home Alone
Ghostbusters
The Wizard of Oz
Snow White
Cinderella
Beauty and the Beast
The Little Mermaid
Pirates of the Caribbean
Spider-Man
Batman
Back to the Future
E.T.
King Kong
Godzilla
Men in Black
Despicable Me
Kung Fu Panda
Ratatouille
Moana
Coco
Inside Out
Cars
The Incredibles
Monsters Inc
Shrek
The Simpsons
SpongeBob SquarePants
Scooby-Doo
Tom and Jerry
Stranger Things

Pick Hard mode or Phrases in the category picker and the generator does the choosing:

Deal a hard word at random →

How do you draw an abstract word?

Every experienced player uses the same four moves, and none of them involve being able to draw. This is the part that turns pictionary words hard into pictionary words winnable:

Draw the consequence. Nobody can draw silence, but everybody can draw a person shushing a room, and the room gets there in four seconds.
Draw the opposite and cross it out. Chaos is quicker to reach through a neat row of boxes with one knocked over than through a chaotic scribble.
Use a stick figure's face. Emotion words are almost free once there is a face on the page, and almost impossible without one.
Build it in parts and number them. Hold up two fingers, draw part one, circle it, draw part two. This is legal, it is what the good players do, and it is how titles get guessed at all.

What does not work is starting over. A hard round has time for one idea executed badly, not two ideas executed neatly, and the drawer who wipes the page at thirty seconds has just guaranteed a zero.

When should you use hard pictionary words?

Not at the start. A room needs two or three easy rounds to learn that shouting guesses is allowed and that bad drawings are the point, and dropping an abstract noun on the first turn just teaches everyone that they are bad at this. Bring the hard set out once somebody has guessed a word in under ten seconds, which is the signal that the easy bank has stopped doing its job.

Mixing is better than switching. One hard word every third round keeps the difficulty honest without turning the evening into an endurance test, and it gives the confident drawer something to look forward to while the nervous one still gets a giraffe. If you are choosing words for pictionary hard mode by hand, aim for roughly a third of the deck, not all of it.

Where are the easier lists?

The everyday categories live on the main pictionary words page: 345 words across easy, objects, animals, food, actions, places, people, nature and sports. For a family table the pictionary words for kids list is banded by age, and for a grown-up game night the pictionary words for adults set is written for people who have opinions about their commute.

For the rules, including how many words a drawer may split a title into and what counts as cheating, see how to play pictionary.

Fair questions

What are hard pictionary words?: Words with no obvious shape: abstract ideas like gravity or nostalgia, idioms like raining cats and dogs, and multi-word titles that have to be built picture by picture. Everyone knows what they mean, which is exactly why they are hard to draw rather than unfair.
What is the hardest word to draw in pictionary?: Abstract states with no physical consequence are the worst: patience, truth, balance. Unlike panic or jet lag, they do not make a person do anything visible, so there is nothing for the drawer to show and nothing for the guessers to read.
How do you draw an abstract word in pictionary?: Draw the consequence rather than the thing, put a stick figure's face on it, or draw the opposite and cross it out. Gravity becomes an apple falling; silence becomes a person shushing a room. Then build it in numbered parts rather than starting over.
Are phrases allowed in pictionary?: Yes, and they make the best rounds in the game. Two things make them land: ninety seconds on the clock, and committing fully to the literal picture instead of hedging toward what the saying means. Guessers translate an absurd image far faster than anyone expects.
When should you use hard words in pictionary?: Once somebody guesses a word in under ten seconds, which is the sign the easy bank has stopped working. Mix one hard word into every third round rather than switching the whole deck, so the nervous players still get a giraffe now and then.
Is an obscure word the same as a hard word?: No, and confusing the two ruins games. A hard word is one everybody knows and nobody can draw. An obscure word is one the room has never heard of, which means the round has no ending regardless of how good the drawing is.