laugh
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "laugh", 5-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 "laugh" 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 "laugh" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
laugh is aEnglishnoun. It means: An expression of mirth particular to the human species; the sound heard in laughing; laughter. Pronounced /lɐːf/. It ranks #2,214 in English word frequency. Often confused with lug and lush.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | laugh |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /lɐːf/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,214 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for laugh is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /lɐːf/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,214 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 7 documented wrong-spelling variants for laugh, with forms such as "alugh", "laguh", and "lauggh". 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, "lug", "lush", "luge", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English laughen, laghen, from (Anglian) Old English hlæhhan, hlehhan, (West Saxon) hliehhan, from Proto-West Germanic *hlahhjan, from Proto-Germanic *hlahjaną. Cognates Germanic: Scots lauch (“to laugh”), Yola leeigh, leigh (“to laugh”), North F… 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 laugh, spelled L-A-U-G-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1An expression of mirth particular to the human species; the sound heard in laughing; laughter.
- 2Something that provokes mirth or scorn.
- 3A fun person.
Etymology
From Middle English laughen, laghen, from (Anglian) Old English hlæhhan, hlehhan, (West Saxon) hliehhan, from Proto-West Germanic *hlahhjan, from Proto-Germanic *hlahjaną. Cognates Germanic: Scots lauch (“to laugh”), Yola leeigh, leigh (“to laugh”), North Frisian laache, lachi, laake, loache, lååke (“to laugh”), Saterland Frisian laachje (“to laugh”), West Frisian laitsje (“to laugh”), Alemannic German lache (“to laugh”), Cimbrian lachan (“to laugh”), Dutch, German, and Low German lachen (“to laugh”), Luxembourgish laachen (“to laugh”), Yiddish לאַכן (lakhn, “to laugh”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Swedish le (“to laugh”), Elfdalian läa (“to laugh”), Faroese læa (“to laugh”), Icelandic hlæja (“to laugh”), Norwegian Nynorsk le, læ, læja (“to laugh”), Crimean Gothic lachen (“to laugh”), Gothic 𐌷𐌻𐌰𐌷𐌾𐌰𐌽 (hlahjan, “to laugh”). Indo-European: Breton kloc'h (“bell”), Irish clog (“bell; clock”), Manx and Scottish Gaelic clag (“bell”), Welsh cloch (“bell”), Russian клекота́ть (klekotátʹ), клокота́ть (klokotátʹ), клохта́ть (kloxtátʹ, “to cluck, cackle”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: alugh,laguh,lauggh,laughh,lauhg,llaugh,luagh
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for laugh
Misspelling Variants of "laugh"
Frequency rank: #2,214 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter L in our English index: