bra
/bɹɑː/
"bra" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bra” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #8,898 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #8,898
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - An item of clothing, usually underwear worn to support the breasts.
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 | bra |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bɹɑː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #8,898 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “bra” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bra is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bɹɑː/. Corpus data places it at rank #8,898 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "An item of clothing, usually underwear worn to support the breasts.".
bra doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BS", "Bt", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Clipping of brassiere, borrowed from French brassière, from Old French braciere (originally a lining inside armor to protect the arm, but later a garment), from Old French brace (“arm”), from Latin bracchia, plural of Latin bracchium (“forearm”), from Ancie… The correct English form is bra, spelled B-R-A.
Definition
- 1An item of clothing, usually underwear worn to support the breasts.
Etymology
Clipping of brassiere, borrowed from French brassière, from Old French braciere (originally a lining inside armor to protect the arm, but later a garment), from Old French brace (“arm”), from Latin bracchia, plural of Latin bracchium (“forearm”), from Ancient Greek βραχίων (brakhíōn, “forearm”), from Proto-Hellenic *brəkʰús (“short”) (because the forearm is shorter than the upper arm), inherited from Proto-Indo-European *mréǵʰus.
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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Using “bra”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-R-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bɹɑː/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “by” - see the side-by-side comparison. bra vs by
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.