cough up
"cough-up" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cough up” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 8
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To expel from the lungs, throat, stomach, etc. by coughing.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cough-up · cough up · English
cough up · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 8 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
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.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cough up |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 8 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “cough up” in English
Rare enough to double-check
cough up is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 6 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for cough up in our index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, suggesting its spelling stands apart enough that readers rarely confuse it with something else.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English coughen up, equivalent to cough + up. Sense 2.1 was perhaps influenced by coffers of money. The correct English form is cough up, spelled C-O-U-G-H- -U-P.
Definition
- 1To expel from the lungs, throat, stomach, etc. by coughing.
- 2To reluctantly or unwillingly give.
- 3To reluctantly or unwillingly give.
- 4To reluctantly or unwillingly give.
- 5To lose a competition by one's own mistakes, usually near the end of the contest.
- 6To spill, to fumble.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how cough up appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
He was coughing up blood.
He was coughing up a lung.
Etymology
From Middle English coughen up, equivalent to cough + up. Sense 2.1 was perhaps influenced by coffers of money.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.