fab
/fæb/
"fab" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fab” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #17,363) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #17,363
- frequency rank, English
- 2,507
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Fabulous (great or spectacular).
Corpus desk
Index EN-fab · fab · English
fab · rank #17,363 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #17,363
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,507
- PHOTO-FINISH evade
Nearest frequency peer: evade (-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 “fab”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- err
err
82,642 corpus weight
- espresso
espresso
82,640 corpus weight
- evade
evade
82,639 corpus weight
- fab
fab
82,638 corpus weight
- fairs
fairs
82,637 corpus weight
- freaky
freaky
82,636 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “fab” 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 | fab |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /fæb/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #17,363 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “fab”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for fab is neighbouring look-alikes ("fi", "FL", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced /fæb/. Frequency #17,363 among 2,507 “F” headwords. Gloss: "Fabulous (great or spectacular).".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for fab, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fi", "FL", "FM", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From fabulous, by shortening. The correct English form is fab, spelled F-A-B.
Definition
- 1Fabulous (great or spectacular).
Etymology
From fabulous, by shortening.
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 "fab", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).