hue
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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3 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "hue", 3-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 "hue" 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 "hue" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
hue is aEnglishnoun. It means: A color, or shade of color; tint; dye. Pronounced /hjuː/. Often confused with hv and huh.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | hue |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /hjuː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #15,190 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for hue is 3 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /hjuː/. Corpus data places it at rank #15,190 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for hue in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hv", "huh", "hug", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English hewe, from Old English hīew (“appearance, form, species, kind; apparition; hue, color; beauty; figure of speech”), from Proto-West Germanic *hiwi, from Proto-Germanic *hiwją (“hue, form, shape, appearance; mildew”), from Proto-Indo-Europ… 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 hue, spelled H-U-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A color, or shade of color; tint; dye.
- 2The characteristic related to the light frequency that appears in the color, for instance red, yellow, green, cyan, blue or magenta.
- 3A character; aspect.
- 4Form; appearance; guise.
Etymology
From Middle English hewe, from Old English hīew (“appearance, form, species, kind; apparition; hue, color; beauty; figure of speech”), from Proto-West Germanic *hiwi, from Proto-Germanic *hiwją (“hue, form, shape, appearance; mildew”), from Proto-Indo-European *kew-, *ḱew- (“skin, colour of the skin”) or *ḱey- (“grey, dark shade”). Cognate with Swedish hy (“complexion, skin”), Norwegian hy (“fluff, mold, skin”), Icelandic hégómi (“vanity”), Gothic 𐌷𐌹𐍅𐌹 (hiwi, “form, show, appearance”). Compare also Sanskrit छवि (chavi, “cuticle, skin, hide; beauty, splendour”); Irish ceo (“fog”), Tocharian B kwele (“black, dark grey”), Lithuanian šývas (“light grey”), Albanian thinjë (“grey”), Sanskrit श्याव (śyāvá, “brown”).
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #15,190 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter H in our English index: