shi
"shi" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“shi” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #15,905) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #15,905
- frequency rank, English
- 6,566
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Abbreviation of shibire.
Corpus desk
Index EN-shi · shi · English
shi · rank #15,905 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #15,905
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 6,566
- PHOTO-FINISH shoved
Nearest frequency peer: shoved (+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 “shi”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- serpent
serpent
84,099 corpus weight
- sesame
sesame
84,098 corpus weight
- shi
shi
84,096 corpus weight
- shoved
shoved
84,095 corpus weight
- Sicily
Sicily
84,094 corpus weight
- simplify
simplify
84,093 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “shi” 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 | shi |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #15,905 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “shi”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for shi is neighbouring look-alikes ("so", "SI", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #15,905 among 6,566 “S” headwords. Gloss: "Abbreviation of shibire.".
No generated misspelling entries exist for shi in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "SI", "SS", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Clipping of shibire. Coined by Japanese-Canadian geneticist and zoologist David Suzuki, the person who also coined "shibire". The correct English form is shi, spelled S-H-I.
Definition
- 1Abbreviation of shibire.
Etymology
Clipping of shibire. Coined by Japanese-Canadian geneticist and zoologist David Suzuki, the person who also coined "shibire".
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 "shi", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).