lb
/paʊnd/
"lb" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“lb” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #7,936) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #7,936
- frequency rank, English
- 2,297
- “L” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Abbreviation of pound (“unit of weight”).
Corpus desk
Index EN-lb · lb · English
lb · rank #7,936 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #7,936
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,297
- PHOTO-FINISH kay
Nearest frequency peer: kay (-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 “lb”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Isaac
Isaac
92,068 corpus weight
- jar
jar
92,067 corpus weight
- kay
kay
92,066 corpus weight
- lb
lb
92,065 corpus weight
- Leicester
Leicester
92,064 corpus weight
- Liam
Liam
92,063 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “lb” 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 | lb |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /paʊnd/ |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #7,936 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “lb”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for lb is neighbouring look-alikes ("le", "li", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /paʊnd/. Frequency #7,936 among 2,297 “L” headwords. Gloss: "Abbreviation of pound (“unit of weight”).".
lb doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "le", "li", "Lt", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: (unit of weight): Abbreviation of libra. The correct English form is lb, spelled L-B.
Definition
- 1Abbreviation of pound (“unit of weight”).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how lb appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The slug is defined as the mass which would accelerate at a rate of 1 ft/s² under a force of one pound-force (lbf). Since 1 lbf is the force exerted on a mass of one pound by a standard gravitational field (of exactly 9.80665 meters per square second), a slug is thus exactly equal to 196133/6096 pounds (about 32.1740485564 lb or 14.593902937206 kg).
The drive system can provide a maximum of 516 lbs ft (700 Nm) at any one time.
Etymology
(unit of weight): Abbreviation of libra.
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.