DOA
"doa" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“DOA” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #38,814) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #38,814
- frequency rank, English
- 3,470
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of dead on arrival.
Corpus desk
Index EN-doa · DOA · English
DOA · rank #38,814 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #38,814
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,470
- PHOTO-FINISH DNR
Nearest frequency peer: DNR (-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 “DOA”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- discus
discus
61,193 corpus weight
- distinctive…
distinctively
61,192 corpus weight
- DNR
DNR
61,188 corpus weight
- DOA
DOA
61,187 corpus weight
- Dumbarton
Dumbarton
61,185 corpus weight
- elaborately
elaborately
61,181 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “DOA” 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 | DOA |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #38,814 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “DOA”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for DOA is neighbouring look-alikes ("Dr", "DS", …), not just typos; it is anadjective. Frequency #38,814 among 3,470 “D” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
DOA has no tracked misspelling variants, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Dr", "DS", "DT", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is DOA, spelled D-O-A.
Definition
- 1Initialism of dead on arrival.
- 2Initialism of defective on arrival.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how DOA appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D.O.A.
Mess around, be D.O.A., be on your way / 'Cause it ain't enough time here
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 "DOA", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).