Holidays and seasons · hangman category
St. Patrick's Day Hangman Words
St. Patrick's Day hangman words about Ireland, shamrocks, folklore, music and luck, in a free list to play online or print with an answer key.
Read the word list
St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17, and the vocabulary around it leans on Irish folklore, music and landscape as much as on the color green. The list gathers the symbols children know (shamrock, rainbow, clover), the Irish words that have entered English (leprechaun, blarney, limerick) and the traditional foods and instruments of a celebration.
Spelling is where the fun and the difficulty both come from. Leprechaun has a ch that sounds like k, and blarney and limerick are place names that became ordinary words. Short words such as gold, luck and harp keep early rounds winnable. For stronger readers, ballad, brogue and bagpipes bring in rarer letters and a few unexpected consonant pairs, and the phrases (pot of gold, soda bread) give whole-class games a quick, recognizable shape.
62 entries. Our solver needed 3.1 wrong guesses on average: 19 easy, 30 medium and 13 hard. The toughest is jig (13 misses), the quickest festival (0).
- shamrock Medium · 3
- clover Medium · 3
- leprechaun Easy · 1
- rainbow Easy · 1
- gold Hard · 10
- coins Hard · 5
- ireland Easy · 1
- irish Medium · 4
- emerald Easy · 1
- green Medium · 3
- parade Easy · 1
- celtic Medium · 2
- harp Hard · 7
- castle Medium · 2
- lucky Hard · 10
- luck Hard · 7
- fortune Medium · 3
- blarney Medium · 3
- limerick Medium · 2
- dublin Medium · 3
- march Hard · 6
- saint Medium · 2
- patrick Medium · 3
- bagpipes Medium · 2
- fiddle Medium · 4
- jig Hard · 13
- dancing Easy · 1
- cabbage Medium · 3
- potato Medium · 4
- bread Medium · 2
- stew Medium · 4
- folklore Medium · 3
- legend Easy · 1
- fairy Medium · 4
- whistle Medium · 2
- tradition Easy · 1
- festival Easy · 0
- celebration Easy · 0
- heritage Easy · 0
- greenery Easy · 1
- meadow Hard · 5
- hillside Easy · 0
- lass Easy · 0
- ballad Medium · 3
- brogue Medium · 2
- clan Medium · 2
- countryside Easy · 0
- kilt Hard · 7
- tune Medium · 4
- cheer Easy · 1
- pot of gold Hard · 8
- four leaf clover Medium · 2
- end of the rainbow Medium · 3
- irish dancing Easy · 1
- soda bread Easy · 1
- irish blessing Easy · 1
- luck of the irish Hard · 5
- gold coins Hard · 7
- green hat Medium · 2
- saint patrick Medium · 2
- st patrick's day Hard · 6
- rolling hills Medium · 3
Words worth a closer look
- shamrockFrom the Irish seamróg, meaning little clover. A shamrock is a three-leaf clover; four-leaf clovers are the rare ones associated with luck.
- leprechaunFrom the Irish leipreachán. The ch is pronounced like k, and the vowels are scattered through the word, a common source of misspellings. A good late-round word.
- blarneyNamed after Blarney Castle in County Cork, where kissing a stone is said to give the gift of persuasive talk. The word now means flattering, smooth speech.
- limerickA city in Ireland, and also a short five-line comic poem. Teachers sometimes use the word as a lead-in to writing one.
- irelandThree of its seven letters are vowels, and the ending land is easy once l and a show up. Useful as a quick geography check on where the holiday comes from.
- brogueA regional accent, especially a lilting Irish one, and also a type of sturdy shoe. The ogue ending matches vogue and rogue, and only o, u and e are vowels.
- rainbowA compound of rain and bow, so once the first half appears most players guess the rest. One of the easiest long words on the list.
- emeraldThe gemstone that gives Ireland its nickname, the Emerald Isle. The d at the end is the letter players guess last.
Using this list in class
Mid-March is the natural time. Because the list has so many Irish place and folklore words, it works as a gentle geography and culture hook: look up Dublin and Limerick on a map after the round, or read a short folktale before playing. Grades two to five get the most from it, and younger children can stay with the short words like gold, luck and harp.
For spelling practice, group the words by sound pattern: the ch that sounds like k in leprechaun, the long o in gold and clover, the silent letters in castle and whistle. A quick printed sheet can also double as a word bank for a short writing task, such as a story about finding a rainbow.
Print a St. Patrick's Day Hangman worksheet
Eight puzzles on one US Letter page, with a clue, letter blanks, an empty frame to draw in, an alphabet strip to cross off and circles to count misses. Page two is the answer key.
Need another sheet?
Draw eight different words from this list, right here. Same layout, new answer key.
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