NB
"nb" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“NB” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #17,908) as a phrase. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #17,908
- frequency rank, English
- 1,534
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of nota bene; used in written English to introduce something to be noted.
Corpus desk
Index EN-nb · NB · English
NB · rank #17,908 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #17,908
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,534
- PHOTO-FINISH nirvana
Nearest frequency peer: nirvana (+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 “NB”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Motorola
Motorola
82,096 corpus weight
- murderous
murderous
82,095 corpus weight
- NB
NB
82,093 corpus weight
- nirvana
nirvana
82,092 corpus weight
- nonstop
nonstop
82,091 corpus weight
- notoriously
notoriously
82,090 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “NB” 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 | NB |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #17,908 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “NB”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for NB is neighbouring look-alikes ("NC", "ne", …), not just typos; it is aphrase. Frequency #17,908 among 1,534 “N” headwords. Gloss: "Initialism of nota bene; used in written English to introduce something to be noted.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for NB, a sign its spelling follows regular English conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "NC", "ne", "NJ", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is NB, spelled N-B.
Definition
- 1Initialism of nota bene; used in written English to introduce something to be noted.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how NB appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
NB: Do not write below this line.
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.