ugly
\ʌ.ɡli\
The verdict
“ugly” is uncommon French (frequency #53,047 among 456 “U” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #53,047
- frequency rank, French
- 456
- “U” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Laid ; moche.
Corpus desk
Index FR-ugly · ugly · French
ugly · rank #53,047 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #53,047
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 456
- PHOTO-FINISH ubuesque
Nearest frequency peer: ubuesque (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rangs de longue queue près de « ugly »
Bande clairsemée: les barres inversent le rang pour que le rare se lise plus court
- télégraphie
télégraphie
46,957 corpus weight
- témérité
témérité
46,956 corpus weight
- ubuesque
ubuesque
46,955 corpus weight
- ugly
ugly
46,954 corpus weight
- umbrella
umbrella
46,953 corpus weight
- vals
vals
46,951 corpus weight
What this shows Vue de longue queue: où « ugly » se situe face à des rangs français aussi rares.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | ugly |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \ʌ.ɡli\ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #53,047 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Longue queue: rang de « ugly » en français
Rare enough to double-check
ugly is uncommon French at frequency #53,047 among 456 “U” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed \ʌ.ɡli\. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Laid ; moche.".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for ugly, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable French rules. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which typically means the spelling is too distinctive to be mistaken for another word.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct French form is ugly, spelled U-G-L-Y.
Definition
- 1Laid ; moche.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how ugly appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Your mom's so ugly, her mom had to be drunk to breastfeed her.
Antonyms
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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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "ugly", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).