bah
/bæ/
"bah" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bah” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #24,671) as an interjection. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #24,671
- frequency rank, English
- 4,121
- “B” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper.
Corpus desk
Index EN-bah · bah · English
bah · rank #24,671 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #24,671
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,121
- PHOTO-FINISH Bakersfield
Nearest frequency peer: Bakersfield (+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 “bah”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- atypical
atypical
75,335 corpus weight
- bah
bah
75,330 corpus weight
- Bakersfield
Bakersfield
75,329 corpus weight
- Bangladeshi
Bangladeshi
75,328 corpus weight
- Bannon
Bannon
75,327 corpus weight
- Bartholomew
Bartholomew
75,325 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “bah” 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 | bah |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Interjection |
| IPA | /bæ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #24,671 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “bah”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for bah is neighbouring look-alikes ("be", "by", …), not just typos; it is aninterjection pronounced /bæ/. Frequency #24,671 among 4,121 “B” headwords. Gloss: "Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper.".
bah has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "be", "by", "BC", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: Early 19th century, probably borrowed from French bah. The correct English form is bah, spelled B-A-H.
Definition
- 1Expressing contempt, disgust, or bad temper.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bah appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
"To the doctor's? Bah!" said the sorceress, and spat upon the floor.
This process being entirely inadequate to express the nature of his emotions he ejaculated "Bah!" and so gave Cripps to understand that he was now removed from consideration as a human being.
Etymology
Early 19th century, probably borrowed from French bah.
This word in other languages
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 "bah", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).