way
/weɪ/
Binary Representation
11-bit index: 11111000000 (decimal 1984)
Position
#1985 of 2048
Hex Index
0x7C0
4-Letter Prefix
way
About "way" in BIP39
"way" is the #1985 word
in the official BIP39 English mnemonic wordlist. It is encoded as the 11-bit binary value
11111000000
(decimal index 1984), placing it at the 97% mark of the full 2048-word list.
The 4-letter prefix "way" uniquely identifies this word among all 2048 entries. At just 3 characters, "way" is one of the shorter words in the BIP39 list, making it quicker to type during wallet recovery but potentially easier to confuse with similar short entries.
Near the end of the wordlist (index 1984), "way" is part of the "W" letter group with 69 entries total, positioned at #16 in that group. Words in the upper range of the list have binary representations with more leading 1s.
In a 12-word seed phrase, each word encodes 11 bits of entropy. The probability of "way" appearing in any specific position of a randomly generated phrase is 1 in 2048 (≈ 0.049%). A complete 24-word phrase encodes 256 bits of entropy, providing security equivalent to a key space of approximately 1.16 × 10⁷⁷ — far beyond the reach of brute-force attacks.
Word #1985 in the Other 9 BIP39 Wordlists
Every official BIP39 wordlist has exactly 2048 entries, so index 1984 encodes the same 11-bit value
(11111000000) in every language.
A wallet configured for one of these languages would use this word instead of "way":