refugee
/ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/
"refugee" is a 7-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“refugee” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #7,383 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #7,383
- frequency rank, English
- 7
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 7
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 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.
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) |
Where “refugee” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for refugee is 7 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/. Corpus data places it at rank #7,383 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
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.
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
How do you spell "refugee"?
What does "refugee" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "refugee"?
How do you pronounce "refugee"?
What is the origin of the word "refugee"?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “refugee”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is R-E-F-U-G-E-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈɹɛfjʊd͡ʒiː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “refuse” - see the side-by-side comparison. refugee vs refuse
- 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.