ans
/ˈænz/
"ans" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ans” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #19,263) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #19,263
- frequency rank, English
- 3,931
- “A” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - plural of an
Corpus desk
Index EN-ans · ans · English
ans · rank #19,263 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #19,263
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,931
- PHOTO-FINISH analytic
Nearest frequency peer: analytic (-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 “ans”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- allocate
allocate
80,740 corpus weight
- analytic
analytic
80,739 corpus weight
- ans
ans
80,738 corpus weight
- apprehended
apprehended
80,737 corpus weight
- ascending
ascending
80,736 corpus weight
- attributable
attributable
80,735 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ans” 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 | ans |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈænz/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #19,263 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ans”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ans is neighbouring look-alikes ("as", "at", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /ˈænz/. Frequency #19,263 among 3,931 “A” headwords. Gloss: "plural of an".
ans has no tracked misspelling variants, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "as", "at", "AP", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct English form is ans, spelled A-N-S.
Definition
- 1plural of an
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 "ans", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).