Hiccough is such a strange word. Do you see it around these days? I very occasionally see it written and each time I look at it and think, “You’re weird, hiccough.”

For US English speakers who are even less likely to have come across this word - it’s just an alternate spelling of hiccup found more regularly these days in UK English (which we in Australia tend to mirror).

The only etymology I can find in my internet wanderings tells me it’s spelt hiccough beacause in the seventeenth century, it was believed that the act of hiccupping was related to coughing. From what information I can find, the word hiccup already existed, and this alternative was introduced as a new spelling. Way to confuse things.

The word hiccup came about as an onomatopoeic descriptor and is thought to have been around since the 1500s. The word sounds like the action, as we gulp in air with the spasm of the diaphragm. It imitates the “hic” sound the epiglottis as it closes, and the “up” of the next breath.

Don’t you think that spelling it ‘hiccough’ just adds to the already overfull pile of words in English ending in the -ough suffix, with a swag of different pronunciations for each (at least six pronunciations in North American English and over ten in British English)?

This same frustration is captured cutely in the opening lines of this poem (found here):

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?

Getting through that poem out loud without a mispronunciation is enough to give a girl a synchronous diaphragmatic flutter, or something just as dire!