als
"als" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“als” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #17,755) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #17,755
- frequency rank, English
- 3,931
- “A” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Obsolete form of also.
Corpus desk
Index EN-als · als · English
als · rank #17,755 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #17,755
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,931
- PHOTO-FINISH affluent
Nearest frequency peer: affluent (-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 “als”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Adolf
Adolf
82,249 corpus weight
- adorned
adorned
82,248 corpus weight
- affluent
affluent
82,247 corpus weight
- als
als
82,246 corpus weight
- ambiguity
ambiguity
82,245 corpus weight
- anguish
anguish
82,244 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “als” 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 | als |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adverb |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #17,755 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “als”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for als is neighbouring look-alikes ("as", "at", …), not just typos; it is anadverb. Frequency #17,755 among 3,931 “A” headwords. Gloss: "Obsolete form of also.".
als doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "as", "at", "an", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English als, variant of alse, alsa, also, from Old English eallswā, from Proto-West Germanic *allswā. More at also. The correct English form is als, spelled A-L-S.
Definition
- 1Obsolete form of also.
Etymology
From Middle English als, variant of alse, alsa, also, from Old English eallswā, from Proto-West Germanic *allswā. More at also.
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 "als", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).