Ask WordMum: Rogue vs Rouge
This month, we’re tackling a couple of words that are easy to mix up in text but mean vastly different things. Let’s keep them separate and simple!
Our Question
When should I use rogue, and when is rouge used?
WordMum Says
The short answer to this question is that a rogue usually uses you, and when you use rouge is dependent entirely on what look you’re going for.
I often see rouge used when someone means rogue, particularly in X-Men fanfic or discussions. They are pronounced differently but their spelling varies only in the transposition of a couple of letters, which makes it easy to muddle on the page. And because they’re both valid words, a spellcheck won’t help us here!
So how do we remember what the correct spelling is?
Rogue (noun, adjective, verb)
This word refers to a person or animal being deviant, dishonest, criminal, mischievous, or naughty. It can be used for objects and concepts in a metaphorical way that links back to the deviant person.
In RPG terms, rogues are usually a thief-like class. In Marvel’s X-Men, Rogue is a character whose name often gets misspelled to Rouge.
It can also be used for unusual biological variations, similar to a sport in genetic terms.
It can be used as a noun directly or as an adjective to describe an aspect of the thing or group. It is also commonly used in the phrase go rogue, for someone or something that unexpectedly behaves in a naughty or unusual way.
More rarely, it can be used as a verb. This refers to weeding out undesirable plants in a field; a crop that has been rogued has been stripped of any unwanted or diseased plants.
Rouge (noun, verb)
This word refers to the colour red (rouge means red in French), usually in reference to cosmetics used to colour the cheeks or lips red or pink. In more niche contexts, it is also a red powder used to polish metal, glass, or gems, or as a pigment.
It works as a noun or verb, referring both to the substance and the application of the substance. So, a person can rouge their cheeks with rouge (though the with rouge is unnecessary because the verb already tells us that!).
How to remember which is which
I refer back to the sound of the word to help me. Rouge has a longer first vowel sound (roo), so it has more vowels before the next consonant (G), and the soft G merges into the shorter E ending. Rogue has a shorter first vowel sound (roh) and a hard G, so having a shorter first syllable and more letters following the G makes sense to me.
Example Time!
These two words have quite different meanings, so let’s see how they work out in the wild.
He was a rogue, a scoundrel, and a wastrel
Well, that’s overkill, but I think we get what the writer is going for here! We’re talking about a person with flexible morals who might need a whack with the naughty stick, so we want the hard-G, short first vowel version of the word.
A rogue asteroid is heading towards Earth
Oh no! This means an asteroid is off-course, having separated from its fellow asteroids, so it’s deviating from its expected trajectory. This brings us back to the deviant or unusual behaviour concept, so we know we want the hard-G spelling.
It might be possible to have a rouge asteroid, but I’m not sure what that might be. An asteroid made entirely out of blusher?
The sheep went rogue and bit the sheepdog before running away from the herd
This sheep is exhibiting non-sheep-like behaviour, so again we want to come back to the scoundrel concept to know which word we need.
The wording here also gives us some more information about the sheep! It’s using the going rogue phrasing, so we know that the sheep had previously been acceptably sheepish and this is new behaviour for them.
They rouged their cheeks before their big date
In this sentence, we have a person applying cosmetics (such as blusher) to their cheeks to make them pinker before a date. The application of colour brings us back to the French word for red. Also you can’t rogue cheeks, that doesn’t make sense, so we know we want the other word here.
The kit included eyeshadow, rouge, and a tube of glitter
While a kit could include a rogue, that seems infeasible given the other items included. So while it might be fun to pack a rogue for travel or emergencies, rouge is the most likely intention of the sentence and we should stick with the cosmetic word in this case.
Does that clear things up for you? Do you have a better or different way of remembering which spelling is which? If so, WordMum would love to hear!
If you want to catch up on existing posts, check out dedicated page that lists them all for you, in alphabetical order. If this post, or any others, reminded you of similar tricky words you’d like help with, let WordMum know.
See you next month for more wordy wisdom!