ugh
\yɡ\
The verdict
“ugh” is a moderately-common French word, ranked #43,199 in French word frequency and used as an interjection.
- #43,199
- frequency rank, French
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Mot utilisé pour indiquer la sagesse prêtée aux Indiens d’Amérique du Nord, souvent en levant une main, la paume ouverte vers l'avant.
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 | ugh |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | \yɡ\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #43,199 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ugh” sits in French frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The French entry for ugh is 3 letters long, classified as an interjection, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as \yɡ\. Corpus data places it at rank #43,199 in overall French word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Mot utilisé pour indiquer la sagesse prêtée aux Indiens d’Amérique du Nord, souvent en levant une main, la paume ouverte vers l'avant.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for ugh in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "un", "up", "UK", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is ugh, spelled U-G-H.
Definition
- 1Mot utilisé pour indiquer la sagesse prêtée aux Indiens d’Amérique du Nord, souvent en levant une main, la paume ouverte vers l'avant.
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 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “ugh”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct French spelling is U-G-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as \yɡ\ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “un” - see the side-by-side comparison. ugh vs un
- Browse more French words and confusable pairs in the same reference. French 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.