cough

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (8)  · 
“
I knew it would come with a cough, but because I had been chain smoking in fear of never wanting another cigarette, my cough was a doozy.

View all »
Definitions (18)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (7)

  1. intransitive verb To expel air from the lungs suddenly and noisily, often to keep the respiratory passages free of irritating material.
  2. intransitive verb To make a noise similar to noisy expulsion of air from the lungs: The engine coughed and died.
  3. transitive verb To expel by coughing: coughed up phlegm.
4 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (6)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (3)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • Usually the cough is a very dry "hacking" cough followed by some foamy discharge, if any discharge at all .... —  Yahoo! Answers: Latest Questions
  • If the cough is accompanied by fever, pleuritic or sharp chest pain, or shortness of breath, you may be dealing with something more serious such as pneumonia.
  • And why on earth would I want to visit a "high-end" * cough, cough* strip club, whether in Vegas or anywhere else? —  Conflict Zen
  • I knew it would come with a cough, but because I had been chain smoking in fear of never wanting another cigarette, my cough was a doozy. —  Random and Odd
  • Do not neglect it, as the asthma cough is the warning signal for a full-blown attack. —  MyLinkVault Newest Links
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 165 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (4)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English coughen, ultimately of imitative origin.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (3)

  1. from Middle English coughen, cowghen, coghen, couwen, kowhen, etc., in Anglo-Saxon with added formative cohhetan, cough (cf. ceahhetan, laugh), = Dutch kugchen, cough, = Middle High German kūtchen, German keichen, keuchen, gasp, pant, German dial. kutchen, kögen, cough; prob. imitative, and related to kink = chink, chincough, etc. The final guttural gh has produced modern f; cf. draft, dwarf, quaff.
  2. from Middle English cough, cowghe, cowe = Dutch kuch, a cough; from the verb.
  3. apparently another spelling and use of coff, buy. By some supposed to be developed from coffer.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/kɔf/
by American Heritage
Hear a sound »

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word a few times a week.

Recently looked up

acrid · wayfarer · wanderer · drift · scatterbrained

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

unicycle hockey · droopy drawers · turducken · cuddlefish · cuttlefish