fie
/faɪ/
"fie" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fie” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #45,929 in English word frequency and used as an interjection.
- #45,929
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Sometimes followed by on or upon: used to express distaste, disgust, or outrage.
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 | fie |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | /faɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #45,929 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “fie” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fie is 3 letters long, classified as an interjection, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /faɪ/. Corpus data places it at rank #45,929 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Sometimes followed by on or upon: used to express distaste, disgust, or outrage.".
fie doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "FL", "FM", "fu", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English fy, from Old French fi, from Latin fī. (with a possible additional influence from Old Norse). Compare Swedish fy. The correct English form is fie, spelled F-I-E.
Definition
- 1Sometimes followed by on or upon: used to express distaste, disgust, or outrage.
Etymology
From Middle English fy, from Old French fi, from Latin fī. (with a possible additional influence from Old Norse). Compare Swedish fy.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “fie”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is F-I-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /faɪ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “FL” - see the side-by-side comparison. fie vs FL
- 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.