NBA
"nba" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“NBA” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #3,708) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #3,708
- frequency rank, English
- 1,534
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of National Basketball Association.
Corpus desk
Index EN-nba · NBA · English
NBA · rank #3,708 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #3,708
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,534
- PHOTO-FINISH narrow
Nearest frequency peer: narrow (-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 “NBA”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- mortgage
mortgage
96,296 corpus weight
- narrative
narrative
96,295 corpus weight
- narrow
narrow
96,294 corpus weight
- NBA
NBA
96,293 corpus weight
- observed
observed
96,292 corpus weight
- occasionally
occasionally
96,291 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “NBA” 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 | NBA |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #3,708 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “NBA”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for NBA is neighbouring look-alikes ("NC", "ne", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun. Frequency #3,708 among 1,534 “N” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for NBA, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. 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.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is NBA, spelled N-B-A.
Definition
- 1Initialism of National Basketball Association.
- 2Initialism of National Boxing Association.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how NBA appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
“The NBA and FIBA are uniquely positioned to build on the rich tradition of European basketball. We look forward to collaborating with FIBA to explore the creation of a new league for fans across the continent,” Silver added.
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 "NBA", not the corpus desk frequency band.