NC
"nc" is a 2-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“NC” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #6,597) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #6,597
- frequency rank, English
- 1,534
- “N” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Abbreviation of nitrocellulose.
Corpus desk
Index EN-nc · NC · English
NC · rank #6,597 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #6,597
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,534
- PHOTO-FINISH ne
Nearest frequency peer: ne (+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 “NC”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- mobility
mobility
93,407 corpus weight
- Montana
Montana
93,406 corpus weight
- NC
NC
93,404 corpus weight
- ne
ne
93,403 corpus weight
- NYC
NYC
93,402 corpus weight
- OMG
OMG
93,401 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “NC” 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 | NC |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #6,597 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “NC”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for NC is neighbouring look-alikes ("ne", "NJ", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #6,597 among 1,534 “N” headwords. 9 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for NC, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ne", "NJ", "ni", 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 pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct English form is NC, spelled N-C.
Definition
- 1Abbreviation of nitrocellulose.
- 2Initialism of nolo contendere, no contest, a plea in criminal cases.
- 3Nick's Class, the complexity class of decision problems solvable in polylogarithmic time using a polynomial number of processors.
- 4Initialism of noun class.
- 5NASA research cargo plane designations.
- 6Initialism of noise control.
- 7Initialism of noise cancellation.
- 8Initialism of noncommercial.
- 9Initialism of numerical control.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how NC appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Near-synonyms: CNC, computer numerical control (broadly synonymous in current usage)
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.