alc
"alc" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“alc” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #49,757) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #49,757
- frequency rank, English
- 3,931
- “A” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Abbreviation of alcohol.
Corpus desk
Index EN-alc · alc · English
alc · rank #49,757 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #49,757
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,931
- PHOTO-FINISH algo
Nearest frequency peer: algo (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “alc”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- adorning
adorning
50,248 corpus weight
- adverb
adverb
50,247 corpus weight
- alc
alc
50,244 corpus weight
- algo
algo
50,243 corpus weight
- Allardyce
Allardyce
50,242 corpus weight
- Almaty
Almaty
50,241 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “alc” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | alc |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #49,757 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “alc”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for alc is neighbouring look-alikes ("as", "at", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #49,757 among 3,931 “A” headwords. Gloss: "Abbreviation of alcohol.".
alc doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "as", "at", "an", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is alc, spelled A-L-C.
Definition
- 1Abbreviation of alcohol.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "alc", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).