NHL
"nhl" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“NHL” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #6,940 in English word frequency and used as a proper noun.
- #6,940
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Initialism of National Hockey League.
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 | NHL |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #6,940 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “NHL” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for NHL is 3 letters long, classified as a proper noun. Corpus data places it at rank #6,940 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Initialism of National Hockey League.".
NHL doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "NJ", "ni", "nm", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is NHL, spelled N-H-L.
Definition
- 1Initialism of National Hockey League.
This word in other languages
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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Using “NHL”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is N-H-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “NJ” - see the side-by-side comparison. NHL vs NJ
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.