Silent GH

The commonest silent letters in English, and the most confusing, because the same gh is /f/ in laugh and cough.

Silent letters

igh / ough / aigh / eigh SILENT_GH_01

Useful pattern · Medium reliability · Common · Advanced · Reading

• Silent: night, though, eight

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 11: Advanced Patterns & Silent Letters

Child explanation

In night, light and though the gh says nothing. In laugh and cough it says /f/.

The rule

Gh is silent inside the igh, eigh, aigh and most ough patterns. It is not silent in laugh, cough, rough, tough, enough and trough, where it is /f/.

What is really going on

Both outcomes descend from a velar fricative that English lost. Whether a given word dropped it or hardened it to /f/ was decided word by word, and no orthographic feature predicts which. The practical approach is to teach igh and eigh as units, ough as a high-variability family, and the /f/ set as a short word list.

Position in the word

• Middle of a word — Inside igh and eigh. For example: night, light, eight, weight.
• End of a word — Silent in through and though; /f/ in rough and cough. For example: though, through, rough, cough.

Examples

Easy examples

night, light, high, eight, though

More examples

right, might, bright, fight, sight, weight, straight, daughter, caught, taught, through

Advanced examples

laugh, cough, rough, tough, enough, trough, thorough

Exceptions

• gh as /f/: laugh, laughter, cough, rough, tough, enough, trough. The old fricative hardened rather than vanished.

Contrast pairs

• though versus tough — One letter apart, and neither the vowel nor the gh matches.
• through versus thorough
• night versus laugh — Silent gh versus /f/ gh.

Teacher note

Do not present silent gh as a rule. Teach the units — igh, eigh, ough — and label ough honestly as high variability. The most useful single thing to tell a child is that gh is a fossil: it records a sound English stopped making six hundred years ago, so it is not their fault it makes no sense.

Related rules

• GH — gh — Usually silent, occasionally /f/, and /g/ only at the start of a word. The single most unreliable consonant spelling in English.
• IGH — igh — Three letters, one long i. Almost always followed by t, and one of the few places gh can be predicted with confidence.
• OUGH — -ough — At least seven pronunciations, and no rule at all. The clearest case in English where remembering the word beats applying a pattern.
• The AUGH family — -augh — Usually /ɔː/ with a silent gh — caught, taught, daughter. Laugh is the one that says /ɑːf/.

• Previous in Silent letters: Silent G in GN — gn- / -gn — G is silent before n at the start of a word and after n at the end — gnat, gnome, sign, design.
• Next in Silent letters: Silent H — h- / rh- / gh- / wh- — H is silent in hour, honest and heir, after r in rhyme and rhythm, and inside ghost and school-type spellings.
• All reading rules

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