refugee
/ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/
"refugee" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“refugee” has 8 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #7,383. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #7,383
- frequency rank, English
- 3,094
- “R” headwords
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 7
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A person seeking refuge (as for shelter or protection), especially in a foreign country, out of fear or prospect of political, religious persecution, war, natural disaster, etc.
Corpus desk
Index EN-refugee · refugee · English
refugee · rank #7,383 · 8 variants · 7 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #7,383
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-4 4 vowels
- CONFUS-MID 7 pairs
- VAR-MID 8 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,094
- PHOTO-FINISH referendum
Nearest frequency peer: referendum (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “refugee”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- recalled
recalled
92,621 corpus weight
- reduces
reduces
92,620 corpus weight
- referendum
referendum
92,619 corpus weight
- refugee
refugee
92,618 corpus weight
- regulated
regulated
92,617 corpus weight
- rounded
rounded
92,616 corpus weight
What this shows “refugee” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | refugee |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/ |
| Letters | 7 |
| Frequency rank | #7,383 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 7 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “refugee”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 8 spelling variants around refugee (IPA /ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #7,383 among 3,094 “R” headwords. Wiktionary lists 2 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for refugee, with forms such as "erfugee", "reffugee", and "refguee". 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 7 confusable-pair relationships, "refuse", "refute", "refused", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French réfugié, past participle of réfugier (“to take refuge, to seek refuge”), from Old French refuge (“hiding place”) from Latin refugium (“a place of refuge, place to flee back to”), originally describing French Huguenots fleeing religious persecuti… The correct English form is refugee, spelled R-E-F-U-G-E-E.
Definition
- 1A person seeking refuge (as for shelter or protection), especially in a foreign country, out of fear or prospect of political, religious persecution, war, natural disaster, etc.
- 2A person who is fleeing from justice, punishment deemed righteous, etc.; a runaway, a fugitive.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how refugee appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
In 1962 a special law had to be passed to permit the immigration of several thousand Chinese refugees who had escaped from Communist China to Hong Kong.
The eight military bases being used to house Afghan refugees have a total capacity of 50,000 to house evacuees. […] The nine refugee resettlement agencies who work in coordination with the federal government will ultimately determine where Afghans are relocated, based on whether they have US ties or where their local affiliates have capacity to take them in.
Etymology
From French réfugié, past participle of réfugier (“to take refuge, to seek refuge”), from Old French refuge (“hiding place”) from Latin refugium (“a place of refuge, place to flee back to”), originally describing French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Noun sense 1 was "one seeking asylum" until 1914, when it evolved to mean more generally "one fleeing home" (first applied in this sense to civilians in Flanders heading west to escape fighting in World War I). By surface analysis, refuge + -ee. Displaced native Old English flīema.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- erfugee
- reffugee
- refguee
- refuege
- refuggee
- reufgee
- rfeugee
- rrefugee
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of refugee - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "refugee", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 7 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (8 here; floor ≥5).