foul
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "foul", 4-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 "foul" 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 "foul" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
foul is anEnglishadj. It means: Covered with, or containing unclean matter; dirty. Pronounced /faʊl/. It ranks #6,574 in English word frequency. Often confused with fu and fun.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | foul |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /faʊl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #6,574 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for foul is 4 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /faʊl/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,574 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 10 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for foul, with forms such as "ffoul", "folu", and "foull". 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, "fu", "fun", "fox", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Inherited from Middle English foul, from Old English fūl (“foul, dirty, unclean, impure, vile, corrupt, rotten, stinking, guilty”), from Proto-West Germanic *fūl, from Proto-Germanic *fūlaz (“foul, rotten”), from Proto-Indo-European *puH- (“to rot”). Cognat… 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 foul, spelled F-O-U-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Covered with, or containing unclean matter; dirty.
- 2Obscene, vulgar or abusive.
- 3Detestable, unpleasant, loathsome.
- 4Disgusting, repulsive; causing disgust.
- 5Ugly; homely; poor.
- 6Unpleasant, stormy or rainy. (of the weather)
- 7Dishonest or not conforming to the established rules and customs of a game, conflict, test, etc.
- 8Entangled and therefore restricting free movement, not clear.
- 9(with "of") Positioned on, in, or near enough to (a specified area) so as to obstruct it.
- 10Outside of the base lines; in foul territory.
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English foul, from Old English fūl (“foul, dirty, unclean, impure, vile, corrupt, rotten, stinking, guilty”), from Proto-West Germanic *fūl, from Proto-Germanic *fūlaz (“foul, rotten”), from Proto-Indo-European *puH- (“to rot”). Cognate with Dutch vuil (“foul, dirty, filthy, obscene, lewd”), German faul (“foul, rotten, putrid, lazy”), German Low German fuul (“foul, rotten, putrid”), Faroese fúlur (“foul”), Icelandic fúll (“foul, rotten, sullen”), Danish ful (“nasty, ugly”), Norwegian Bokmål ful (“clever, sly”), and Swedish ful (“ugly, dirty, bad”), and through Indo-European, with Albanian fëlliq (“to make dirty”), Latin puter (“rotten”). More at putrid. Ancient Greek φαῦλος (phaûlos, “bad”) is a false cognate inasmuch as it is not from the same etymon, instead being cognate to few.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ffoul,folu,foull,fuol,oful
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for foul
Misspelling Variants of "foul"
Frequency rank: #6,574 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: