ba
"ba" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“ba” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #5,761) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #5,761
- frequency rank, English
- 4,121
- “B” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A being's soul or personality, represented as a bird-headed figure, which survives after death but must be sustained with offerings of food.
Corpus desk
Index EN-ba · ba · English
ba · rank #5,761 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #5,761
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,121
- PHOTO-FINISH aw
Nearest frequency peer: aw (-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 “ba”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- arrow
arrow
94,243 corpus weight
- availability
availability
94,242 corpus weight
- aw
aw
94,241 corpus weight
- ba
ba
94,240 corpus weight
- bend
bend
94,239 corpus weight
- boundary
boundary
94,238 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “ba” 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 | ba |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #5,761 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “ba”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ba is neighbouring look-alikes ("be", "by", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #5,761 among 4,121 “B” headwords. Gloss: "A being's soul or personality, represented as a bird-headed figure, which survives after death but must be sustained with offerings of food.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for ba in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "be", "by", "BC", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Egyptian bꜣ, G53-Z1 The correct English form is ba, spelled B-A.
Definition
- 1A being's soul or personality, represented as a bird-headed figure, which survives after death but must be sustained with offerings of food.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how ba appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Any ordinary person who has ever floated out of his body during a nap knows what a Ba is, but unfortunately the dogmas of our materialistic culture constrain the person to ignore and repress his experience.
But the Ba, I remembered, could be seen as the mistress of your heart and might or might not decide to speak to you, just as the heart cannot always forgive.
Etymology
Borrowed from Egyptian bꜣ, G53-Z1
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.