Hou
"hou" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Hou” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #25,415) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #25,415
- frequency rank, English
- 2,646
- “H” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A surname from Chinese.
Corpus desk
Index EN-hou · Hou · English
Hou · rank #25,415 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #25,415
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,646
- PHOTO-FINISH horoscope
Nearest frequency peer: horoscope (-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 “Hou”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- hoods
hoods
74,588 corpus weight
- horoscope
horoscope
74,587 corpus weight
- Hou
Hou
74,586 corpus weight
- humanoid
humanoid
74,585 corpus weight
- hurst
hurst
74,584 corpus weight
- hyung
hyung
74,583 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “Hou” 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 | Hou |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #25,415 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Hou” sits in English frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for Hou is neighbouring look-alikes ("HR", "HP", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun. Frequency #25,415 among 2,646 “H” headwords. Gloss: "A surname from Chinese.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for Hou, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "HR", "HP", "HQ", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from Chinese 侯 (Hóu). The correct English form is Hou, spelled H-O-U.
Definition
- 1A surname from Chinese.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how Hou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
According to the court, Tseng claimed the money to pay the salaries of three county council aides, but Tseng colluded with his wife, surnamed Hou (侯), to hire their relatives to pose as aides and pocket the money themselves. It was found that one of the aides continued to receive a salary from April to July 2017 after having quit and remitted the money to…
Etymology
Borrowed from Chinese 侯 (Hóu).
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 "Hou", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).