# uncouth

> English word · Adjective · IPA /ʌnˈkuːθ/ · frequency rank #52,067

## Definitions
1. Unfamiliar, strange, foreign.
2. Clumsy, awkward.
3. Unrefined, crude.

## Etymology
From Middle English uncouth, from Old English uncūþ (“unknown; unfamiliar; strange”), from Proto-West Germanic *unkunþ, from Proto-Germanic *unkunþaz (“unknown”), equivalent to un- + couth. The modern pronunciation does not show /aʊ/, the usual development of the Middle English vowel from the Great Vowel Shift. It is usually explained as a pronunciation taken from Northern English dialects, which did not undergo the diphthongization of the vowel.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/uncouth