lax
/læks/
"lax" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“lax” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #14,157) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #14,157
- frequency rank, English
- 2,297
- “L” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A salmon.
Corpus desk
Index EN-lax · lax · English
lax · rank #14,157 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #14,157
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,297
- PHOTO-FINISH lest
Nearest frequency peer: lest (+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 “lax”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Kylie
Kylie
85,848 corpus weight
- Lara
Lara
85,846 corpus weight
- lax
lax
85,844 corpus weight
- lest
lest
85,843 corpus weight
- Levi
Levi
85,842 corpus weight
- Lilly
Lilly
85,841 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “lax” 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 | lax |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /læks/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #14,157 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “lax”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for lax is neighbouring look-alikes ("le", "li", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /læks/. Frequency #14,157 among 2,297 “L” headwords. Gloss: "A salmon.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for lax, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "le", "li", "Lt", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English lax, from Old English leax (“salmon”), from Proto-West Germanic *lahs (“salmon”), from Proto-Germanic *lahsaz (“salmon”), from Proto-Indo-European *laḱs- (“salmon, trout”). Cognate with Middle Dutch lacks, lachs, lasche (“salmon”), Middl… The correct English form is lax, spelled L-A-X.
Definition
- 1A salmon.
Etymology
From Middle English lax, from Old English leax (“salmon”), from Proto-West Germanic *lahs (“salmon”), from Proto-Germanic *lahsaz (“salmon”), from Proto-Indo-European *laḱs- (“salmon, trout”). Cognate with Middle Dutch lacks, lachs, lasche (“salmon”), Middle Low German las (“salmon”), German Lachs (“salmon”), Norwegian laks (“salmon”), Danish laks (“salmon”), Swedish lax (“salmon”), Icelandic lax (“salmon”), Lithuanian lašišà (“salmon”), Latvian lasis, Russian лосо́сь (losósʹ, “salmon”), Albanian leshterik (“eel-grass”). Doublet of lox.
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 "lax", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).