DB
"db" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“DB” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #10,030) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #10,030
- frequency rank, English
- 3,470
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of dead body.
Corpus desk
Index EN-db · DB · English
DB · rank #10,030 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,030
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,470
- PHOTO-FINISH deepest
Nearest frequency peer: deepest (+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 “DB”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- crawl
crawl
89,975 corpus weight
- credible
credible
89,974 corpus weight
- cursed
cursed
89,973 corpus weight
- DB
DB
89,971 corpus weight
- deepest
deepest
89,970 corpus weight
- delightful
delightful
89,968 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “DB” 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 | DB |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #10,030 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “DB”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for DB is neighbouring look-alikes ("do", "Dr", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #10,030 among 3,470 “D” headwords. 9 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
DB doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "do", "Dr", "de", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is DB, spelled D-B.
Definition
- 1Initialism of dead body.
- 2Initialism of defensive back.
- 3Initialism of database.
- 4Initialism of depot brigade.
- 5Initialism of defined benefits.
- 6Initialism of delayed broadcast.
- 7Initialism of dirty book: a pornographic publication.
- 8Initialism of diplomatic bag.
- 9Initialism of dot ball.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how DB appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
With an extra-long weekend before Christmas and New Year's Day coming up, the police of motorized, subwayless Los Angeles had learned by experience to expect plenty of wrecked cars and DBs (dead bodies) on their hands.
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.