you
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
3 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "you", 3-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 "you" 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 "you" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
you is aEnglishpron. It means: The people spoken, or written to, as an object. Pronounced /ju/. It ranks #11 in English word frequency. Often confused with yu and yr.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | you |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pron |
| IPA | /ju/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for you is 3 letters long, classified as apron, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ju/. Corpus data places it at rank #11 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 8 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for you in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable English patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "yu", "yr", "yt", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English you, yow, ȝow (object case of ye), from Old English ēow (“you”, dative case of ġē), from Proto-West Germanic *iwwi (“you”, dative case of *jiʀ), from Proto-Germanic *iwwiz (“you”, dative case of *jīz), the Western form of Proto-Germanic … 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 you, spelled Y-O-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The people spoken, or written to, as an object.
- 2(To) yourselves, (to) yourself.
- 3The person spoken to or written to, as an object. (Replacing thee; originally as a mark of respect.)
- 4The people spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Replacing ye.)
- 5The person spoken to or written to, as a subject. (Originally as a mark of respect.)
- 6A person's favorite sports team.
- 7Anyone, one; an unspecified individual or group of individuals (as subject or object).
- 8A dummy pronoun used in certain constructions, usually with verbs of receiving (such as get or find) or sensing (such as see or hear), typically stating the existence or typicality of something.
Etymology
From Middle English you, yow, ȝow (object case of ye), from Old English ēow (“you”, dative case of ġē), from Proto-West Germanic *iwwi (“you”, dative case of *jiʀ), from Proto-Germanic *iwwiz (“you”, dative case of *jīz), the Western form of Proto-Germanic *izwiz (“you”, dative case of *jūz), from Proto-Indo-European *yúHs (“you”, plural). Cognate with Scots you (“you”), Saterland Frisian jou (“you”), West Frisian jo (“you”), Low German jo, joe and oe (“you”), Dutch jou and u (“you”), German euch (“you”), Middle High German eu, iu (“you”, object pronoun), Latin vōs (“you”), Avestan 𐬬𐬋 (vō, “you”), Ashkun yë̃ (“you”), Kamkata-viri šo (“you”), Sanskrit यूयम् (yūyám, “you”). See usage notes. Ye, you and your are cognate with Dutch jij/je, jou, jouw; Low German ji, jo/ju, jug and German ihr, euch and euer respectively. Ye is also cognate with Danish I and archaic Swedish I.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #11 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter Y in our English index: