Word.ws English Dictionary

ough

ough interjection: the sound of a grunt or groan or cough.

Interjection

  1. The sound of a grunt or groan or cough.
    • "Ough! ough! ough!" groaned the old woman; "he wants to go, away from the nest where he was warmed, and nursed, and brought up.1856, John Esten Cooke, The Last of the Foresters
    • We strove to extort from him the cause of this ebullition of passion, but he only shook his head in reply to our questions, and uttered a guttural "ough."1874, H. S. Caswell, The Path of Duty, and Other Stories

Questions about ough

What does ough mean?
Ough means the sound of a grunt or groan or cough.
What part of speech is ough?
Ough is an interjection.

Words near ough in the dictionary

  1. ouens
  2. ouer
  3. Ouessant
  4. Ouessants
  5. Ouest
  6. ough
  7. ought
  8. ought to
  9. ought-not-ness
  10. oughta
  11. oughten

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ough (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “ough.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ough. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.