ought
/ɔːt/
"ought" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ought” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,966 in English word frequency and used as a verb.
- #3,966
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 3
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - simple past of owe
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 | ought |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | /ɔːt/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #3,966 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 3 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ought” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for ought is 5 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɔːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,966 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "simple past of owe".
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for ought, with forms such as "oguht", "ougght", and "oughht". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 3 confusable-pair relationships, "out", "oust", "ouch", since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English oughte, aughte, aȝte, ahte, from Old English āhte, first and third person singular past tense of Old English āgan (“to own, possess”), equivalent to owe + -t. Cognate with Sanskrit ईश्वर (īśvará, “capable of, liable”). The correct English form is ought, spelled O-U-G-H-T.
Definition
- 1simple past of owe
Etymology
From Middle English oughte, aughte, aȝte, ahte, from Old English āhte, first and third person singular past tense of Old English āgan (“to own, possess”), equivalent to owe + -t. Cognate with Sanskrit ईश्वर (īśvará, “capable of, liable”).
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: oguht,ougght,oughht,oughtt,ougth,ouhgt,uoght
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ought - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “ought”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is O-U-G-H-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ɔːt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “out” - see the side-by-side comparison. ought vs out
- 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.