Tough

How to spell tough

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce tough

What does tough mean?

1. adjectiveHard to deal with, or strong and able to withstand wear, force, or hardship.

Tough in a sentence

• The new manager made some tough decisions about the budget.

• These work boots are tough enough to last for years on a building site.

Where does tough come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English toh, which meant strong, firm, or able to resist tearing, and it traces back to a Germanic root shared with the Dutch taai and the German zah, both carrying the same sense of clinging stubbornness. In its earliest use it described materials such as leather, sinew, or wood that bent without breaking. The peculiar -ough spelling is a fossil: it once stood for a throaty consonant, similar to the sound in the Scottish loch, which English speakers gradually stopped pronouncing while the written form stubbornly stayed put. By the medieval period the meaning had broadened from physically resilient things to resilient people, and later still to demanding situations that test a person. That same spelling family gives us the notorious cluster of look-alikes, though, through, and rough, which is exactly why -ough words are such reliable spelling traps.

How the word is built

• tough (a single root from Old English toh: firm, strong); the -ough spelling preserves a guttural consonant that English has since stopped pronouncing