FBI
/ˈɛf.biː.aɪ/
"fbi" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“FBI” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #3,429) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #3,429
- frequency rank, English
- 2,507
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Corpus desk
Index EN-fbi · FBI · English
FBI · rank #3,429 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #3,429
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,507
- PHOTO-FINISH farmers
Nearest frequency peer: farmers (-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 “FBI”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- electricity
electricity
96,575 corpus weight
- farmers
farmers
96,573 corpus weight
- FBI
FBI
96,572 corpus weight
- grounds
grounds
96,571 corpus weight
- gym
gym
96,570 corpus weight
- helpful
helpful
96,569 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “FBI” 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 | FBI |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | /ˈɛf.biː.aɪ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #3,429 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “FBI”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for FBI is neighbouring look-alikes ("fi", "FL", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun pronounced /ˈɛf.biː.aɪ/. Frequency #3,429 among 2,507 “F” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
FBI doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fi", "FL", "FM", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, 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 FBI, spelled F-B-I.
Definition
- 1Initialism of Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- 2Federation of British Industry (1916–1965), forerunner of CBI (Confederation of British Industry).
- 3fire behaviour index
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how FBI appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
For a while, nearly every girl at school on whom I had a crush had a father in the FBI.
The FBI began publishing national quarterly crime reports last year, but has not done so for the first two quarters of 2021, stating that they require at least 60% of agencies to submit NIBRS data in order to publish quarterly data.
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 "FBI", not the corpus desk frequency band.