pau
"pau" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“pau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #26,910) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #26,910
- frequency rank, English
- 4,417
- “P” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - done; over; finished
Corpus desk
Index EN-pau · pau · English
pau · rank #26,910 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #26,910
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,417
- PHOTO-FINISH parkland
Nearest frequency peer: parkland (-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 “pau”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Nuremberg
Nuremberg
73,096 corpus weight
- Ozzy
Ozzy
73,095 corpus weight
- palatable
palatable
73,094 corpus weight
- parkland
parkland
73,092 corpus weight
- pau
pau
73,091 corpus weight
- Pensacola
Pensacola
73,089 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “pau” 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 | pau |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #26,910 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “pau”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for pau is neighbouring look-alikes ("PM", "PC", …), not just typos; it is anadjective. Frequency #26,910 among 4,417 “P” headwords. Gloss: "done; over; finished".
pau has no tracked misspelling variants, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "PM", "PC", "PP", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Hawaiian Pidgin English pau, from Hawaiian pau (“done, finished”). The correct English form is pau, spelled P-A-U.
Definition
- 1done; over; finished
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how pau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
I had never known any haoles except Elmer and Marks and they were ice cold affairs. Everyone was always glad when their twice-a-month visit was pau. The very island seemed to sigh with relief […]
When the county truck was pau hauling rubbish for the day, […]
Etymology
From Hawaiian Pidgin English pau, from Hawaiian pau (“done, finished”).
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 "pau", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).