UTF

[…]

/[…]/ abbrev

The verdict

“UTF” is uncommon German (frequency #85,983 among 2,159 “U” headwords), classed as an abbreviation. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#85,983
frequency rank, German
2,159
“U” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Abkürzung für Unicode Transformation Format

Corpus desk

Index DE-utf · UTF · German

UTF · rank #85,983 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #85,983
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 2,159
  • PHOTO-FINISH Urwälder

Nearest frequency peer: Urwälder (-2 rank slots)

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Langschwanz-Ränge nahe „UTF“

Dünnes Band: Balken invertieren den Rang, seltenere Formen wirken kürzer

corpus weight

What this shows Langschwanz-Sicht: wo „UTF“ gegen ähnlich seltene deutsche Ränge sitzt.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for UTF
PropertyValue
HeadwordUTF
LanguageGerman
Part of speechAbbreviation
IPA[…]
Letters3
Frequency rank#85,983
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Langschwanz-Rang von „UTF“ im Deutschen

Die Häufigkeit läuft von den wenigen Alltagswörtern (links) bis zur langen, seltenen Schwanzseite (rechts).UTFfällt in diesen Seltenheitsbereich:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Die Ticks laufen logarithmisch; jeder ist rund zehnmal seltener. Seltene Nachbarn derselben Bandbreite: „Urwälder“ (#85,981), „Unterlauf“ (#85,980), „vaginale“ (#85,986). Unter 2,159 „U“-Lemmata liegt „UTF“ bei #85,983. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

UTF is uncommon German at frequency #85,983 among 2,159 “U” headwords, classed as anabbreviation, transcribed […]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Abkürzung für Unicode Transformation Format".

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for UTF, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is UTF, spelled U-T-F.

Definition

  1. 1
    Abkürzung für Unicode Transformation Format

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how UTF appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. „UTF-8 has 8-bit code units. It builds a bridge between the legacy ASCII encoding and Unicode. ASCII has only 128 characters, whose numbers are the same as the first 128 Unicode code points. UTF-8 is backward compatible, because all ASCII codes are valid code units. […]“
  2. „UTF-8 uses 1 byte (8-bits) to represent characters in the ASCII set, and two or three bytes for the rest. UTF-16 uses 2 bytes (16 bits) for most characters, and four bytes for the rest.“

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

How do you spell "UTF"?
"UTF" is spelled U-T-F. The IPA pronunciation is […].
What does "UTF" mean?
As an abbreviation, "UTF" means: Abkürzung für Unicode Transformation Format
How do you pronounce "UTF"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "UTF" is […]. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "UTF" come from?
"UTF" is a German word. PlainSpell's reference spans five languages -- English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German -- with definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for each.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar German words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "UTF", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked German headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list