uncouth

Meaning

  1. Unfamiliar, strange, foreign.
  2. Clumsy, awkward.
  3. Unrefined, crude.

Frequency

30k
Pronounced as (IPA)
/ʌnˈkuːθ/
Etymology

In summary

From Middle English uncouth, from Old English uncūþ (“unknown; unfamiliar; strange”), from Proto-West Germanic *unkunþ, from Proto-Germanic *unkunþaz (“unknown”), equivalent to un- + couth. The modern pronunciation does not show /aʊ/, the usual development of the Middle English vowel from the Great Vowel Shift. It is usually explained as a pronunciation taken from Northern English dialects, which did not undergo the diphthongization of the vowel.

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