ASA
"asa" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ASA” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,175) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #16,175
- frequency rank, English
- 3,931
- “A” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of Acoustical Society of America.
Corpus desk
Index EN-asa · ASA · English
ASA · rank #16,175 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,175
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,931
- PHOTO-FINISH artificially
Nearest frequency peer: artificially (-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 “ASA”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- ageing
ageing
83,829 corpus weight
- aiding
aiding
83,828 corpus weight
- artificially
artificially
83,827 corpus weight
- ASA
ASA
83,826 corpus weight
- aux
aux
83,825 corpus weight
- barring
barring
83,824 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ASA” 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 | ASA |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #16,175 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ASA”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ASA is neighbouring look-alikes ("at", "aw", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun. Frequency #16,175 among 3,931 “A” headwords. 7 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for ASA, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "at", "aw", "AU", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is ASA, spelled A-S-A.
Definition
- 1Initialism of Acoustical Society of America.
- 2Initialism of American Standards Association, which has changed its name to American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
- 3Initialism of American Society of Anesthesiologists.
- 4Initialism of Amateur Swimming Association.
- 5Initialism of Advertising Standards Authority.
- 6Initialism of Ancient South Arabian.
- 7Initialism of American Staffing Association.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ASA appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) classification is a measure of comorbidity aimed at predicting perioperative mortality rates, but has also demonstrated strong correlation with postoperative pulmonary complication. Substantial increases in pulmonary complication risk occurred with increasing ASA class greater than II.
“A long career gap can sometimes make it difficult to re-enter the workforce, especially in areas with rapidly changing technological advancements,” said Stephen Dwyer, president of the ASA. Microretirees may also lose out on retirement contributions and income they would have received had they chosen to stay in the workforce, he added.
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 "ASA", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).