you
/ju/
"you" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“you” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #11 in English word frequency and used as a pronoun.
- #11
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The people spoken, or written to, as an object.
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 | you |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pronoun |
| IPA | /ju/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #11 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “you” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for you is 3 letters long, classified as a pronoun, 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.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for you, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "yu", "yr", "yt", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
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 … The correct English form is you, spelled Y-O-U.
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
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 “you”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is Y-O-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ju/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “yu” - see the side-by-side comparison. you vs yu
- 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.