BMI
"bmi" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“BMI” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,419) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #16,419
- frequency rank, English
- 4,121
- “B” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of body mass index.
Corpus desk
Index EN-bmi · BMI · English
BMI · rank #16,419 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,419
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,121
- PHOTO-FINISH blender
Nearest frequency peer: blender (-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 “BMI”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- bleak
bleak
83,584 corpus weight
- blender
blender
83,583 corpus weight
- BMI
BMI
83,582 corpus weight
- bogus
bogus
83,581 corpus weight
- booming
booming
83,580 corpus weight
- Bridget
Bridget
83,579 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “BMI” 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 | BMI |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #16,419 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “BMI”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for BMI is neighbouring look-alikes ("by", "BS", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #16,419 among 4,121 “B” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
BMI doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BS", "bo", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Our source data has no etymology on file for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is BMI, spelled B-M-I.
Definition
- 1Initialism of body mass index.
- 2Initialism of brain–machine interface.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how BMI appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The Federal Obesity Clinical Guidelines define underweight as a BMI of 18 or less, overweight as a BMI of 25 to 29.9 and obesity as a BMI of 30 and above.
Wrong, says a new study, which has found that among adults 18 to 90 across the BMI continuum, having an apple shape increased the risk of death -- particularly death from cardiovascular disease. Even at BMIs above 30, where obesity begins, men and women whose waist-to-hip ratio identified them as more pear-shaped were less likely to die -- of any cause an…
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 "BMI", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).