HBO
/ˌeɪtʃ ˌbiː ˈoʊ/
"hbo" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“HBO” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #10,553) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #10,553
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of Home Box Office, a premium movie and entertainment channel.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hbo · HBO · English
HBO · rank #10,553 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #10,553
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH groove
Nearest frequency peer: groove (-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 “HBO”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- frightened
frightened
89,451 corpus weight
- Gavin
Gavin
89,450 corpus weight
- groove
groove
89,449 corpus weight
- HBO
HBO
89,448 corpus weight
- hedge
hedge
89,447 corpus weight
- homosexuali…
homosexuality
89,446 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “HBO” 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 | HBO |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| IPA | /ˌeɪtʃ ˌbiː ˈoʊ/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,553 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “HBO”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for HBO is neighbouring look-alikes ("he", "hi", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun pronounced /ˌeɪtʃ ˌbiː ˈoʊ/. Frequency #10,553 among 2,646 “H” headwords. Gloss: "Initialism of Home Box Office, a premium movie and entertainment channel.".
HBO 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, "he", "hi", "HD", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct English form is HBO, spelled H-B-O.
Definition
- 1Initialism of Home Box Office, a premium movie and entertainment channel.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how HBO appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Most Chinese users watch HBO through virtual private networks, or VPNs.
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 "HBO", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).