cough
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "cough", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "cough" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "cough" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
cough is aEnglishverb. It means: Sometimes followed by up: to force (something) out of the lungs or throat by pushing air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound), and out through the mouth. Pronounced /kɒf/. It ranks #7,668 in English word frequency. Often confused with coup and cour.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cough |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /kɒf/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #7,668 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for cough is 5 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kɒf/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,668 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for cough, with forms such as "ccough", "coguh", and "couggh". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "coup", "cour", "could", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English coughen, coghen (“to cough; to vomit”) [and other forms], from Old English *cohhian (compare Old English cohhetan (“to bluster; to riot; to cough (?)”)), from Proto-West Germanic *kuh- (“to cough”), ultimately of onomatopoeic origin. Cog… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is cough, spelled C-O-U-G-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Sometimes followed by up: to force (something) out of the lungs or throat by pushing air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound), and out through the mouth.
- 2To cause (oneself or something) to be in a certain condition in the manner described in etymology 1 sense 1.1.
- 3To express (words, etc.) in the manner described in etymology 1 sense 1.1.
- 4To surrender (information); to confess.
- 5Chiefly followed by up: to give up or hand over (something); especially, to pay up (money).
- 6To push air from the lungs through the glottis (causing a short, explosive sound) and out through the mouth, usually to expel something blocking or irritating the airway.
- 7To make a noise like a cough.
- 8To surrender information; to confess, to spill the beans.
Etymology
From Middle English coughen, coghen (“to cough; to vomit”) [and other forms], from Old English *cohhian (compare Old English cohhetan (“to bluster; to riot; to cough (?)”)), from Proto-West Germanic *kuh- (“to cough”), ultimately of onomatopoeic origin. Cognates * Middle Dutch cuchen (“to cough”) (modern Dutch kuchen (“to cough”); German Low German kuchen (“to cough”)) * Middle High German kûchen (“to breathe (on); to exhale”), kîchen (“to breathe with difficulty”) (modern German keichen, keuchen (“to breathe with difficulty; to gasp, pant”)) * Spanish cof (“coughing sound”) * West Frisian kiche (“to cough”), kochelje (“to cough persistently”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccough,coguh,couggh,coughh,couhg,cuogh,ocugh
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for cough
Misspelling Variants of "cough"
Frequency rank: #7,668 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our English index: