pao
"pao" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pao” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #25,514) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #25,514
- frequency rank, English
- 4,417
- “P” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A fairy chess piece which moves identically to the xiangqi cannon, moving orthogonally and must hop over a piece of either side to capture.
Corpus desk
Index EN-pao · pao · English
pao · rank #25,514 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #25,514
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,417
- PHOTO-FINISH palliative
Nearest frequency peer: palliative (-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 “pao”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- overthrown
overthrown
74,490 corpus weight
- Palermo
Palermo
74,489 corpus weight
- palliative
palliative
74,488 corpus weight
- pao
pao
74,487 corpus weight
- parable
parable
74,486 corpus weight
- pastime
pastime
74,485 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “pao” 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 | pao |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #25,514 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “pao”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for pao is neighbouring look-alikes ("PM", "PC", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #25,514 among 4,417 “P” headwords. Gloss: "A fairy chess piece which moves identically to the xiangqi cannon, moving orthogonally and must hop over a piece of either side to capture.".
The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for pao, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable English rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "PM", "PC", "PP", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Borrowed from the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 炮 (pào). The correct English form is pao, spelled P-A-O.
Definition
- 1A fairy chess piece which moves identically to the xiangqi cannon, moving orthogonally and must hop over a piece of either side to capture.
Etymology
Borrowed from the Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the Mandarin 炮 (pào).
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 "pao", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).