ew
/ˈiː.uː/
"ew" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ew” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #13,337) as an interjection. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #13,337
- frequency rank, English
- 2,246
- “E” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Expression of disgust or nausea.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ew · ew · English
ew · rank #13,337 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #13,337
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,246
- PHOTO-FINISH endured
Nearest frequency peer: endured (-1 rank slots)
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.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “ew”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- eccentric
eccentric
86,670 corpus weight
- electromagn…
electromagnetic
86,667 corpus weight
- emblem
emblem
86,666 corpus weight
- endured
endured
86,665 corpus weight
- ew
ew
86,664 corpus weight
- fascism
fascism
86,659 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ew” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | ew |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | /ˈiː.uː/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #13,337 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ew”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ew is neighbouring look-alikes ("ex", "ey", …), not just typos; it is aninterjection pronounced /ˈiː.uː/. Frequency #13,337 among 2,246 “E” headwords. Gloss: "Expression of disgust or nausea.".
Zero misspellings are on record for ew in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ex", "ey", "ez", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Onomatopoeic, ideophonic. Compare oh, ugh. The correct English form is ew, spelled E-W.
Definition
- 1Expression of disgust or nausea.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ew appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Ew! There’s a fly in my soup.
Ew! This peanut butter tastes disgusting!
Etymology
Onomatopoeic, ideophonic. Compare oh, ugh.
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); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.