ugly
[ʌɡli]
The verdict
“ugly” has 6 generated spelling variants in the German index at frequency #49,317. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #49,317
- frequency rank, German
- 30,279
- “U” headwords
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 7
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - unangenehm für das Auge; nicht ästhetisch ansprechend
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ugly |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | [ʌɡli] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #49,317 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ugly” sits in German frequency
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 6 spelling variants around ugly (IPA [ʌɡli]), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #49,317 among 30,279 “U” headwords. Wiktionary lists 3 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for ugly, with forms such as "guly", "uggly", and "uglly". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 7 confusable-pair relationships, "Ulm", "URL", "Ulf", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is ugly, spelled U-G-L-Y.
Definition
- 1unangenehm für das Auge; nicht ästhetisch ansprechend
- 2unangenehm für das Ohr oder einem anderen Sinn
- 3seine Gefühle oder die guten Sitten beleidigend
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- guly
- uggly
- uglly
- uglyy
- ugyl
- ulgy
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ugly - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ugly”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is U-G-L-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ʌɡli] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Ulm” - see the side-by-side comparison. ugly vs Ulm
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
Same frequency band
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.