doughty
/ˈdaʊti/
"doughty" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“doughty” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #35,694 in English word frequency and used as an adjective.
- #35,694
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 11
- tracked misspellings
- 3
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Bold; brave, courageous.
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 | doughty |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /ˈdaʊti/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #35,694 |
| Misspellings tracked | 11 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “doughty” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for doughty is 7 letters long, classified as an adjective, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈdaʊti/. Corpus data places it at rank #35,694 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Bold; brave, courageous.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 11 likely wrong-spelling variants for doughty, with forms such as "ddoughty", "doguhty", and "dougghty". 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 3 confusable-pair relationships, "drought", "dough", "Dougherty", where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: The adjective is derived from Middle English doughty (“brave, bold, valiant”), from Old English dohtiġ, dyhtiġ (“competent, good, strong, valiant”), from Proto-West Germanic *duhtīg. The English word may be analysed as dought + -y, and is cognate with Danis… The correct English form is doughty, spelled D-O-U-G-H-T-Y.
Definition
- 1Bold; brave, courageous.
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Middle English doughty (“brave, bold, valiant”), from Old English dohtiġ, dyhtiġ (“competent, good, strong, valiant”), from Proto-West Germanic *duhtīg. The English word may be analysed as dought + -y, and is cognate with Danish dygtig (“virtuous, proficient”), Dutch duchtig (“severe, strict”), German tüchtig (“capable, competent, efficient; big; hard”), Icelandic dygðugur (“virtuous, stable”), Scots douchty, douchtie (“bold, valiant”), Swedish duktig (“efficient; good; capable, clever, smart”). The noun is derived from the adjective.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ddoughty,doguhty,dougghty,doughhty,doughtty,doughtyy,doughyt,dougthy,douhgty,duoghty,odughty
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of doughty - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “doughty”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is D-O-U-G-H-T-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈdaʊti/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “drought” - see the side-by-side comparison. doughty vs drought
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
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.