tobe
/təʊb/
"tobe" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“tobe” has 5 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #49,100. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #49,100
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A cotton garment worn in parts of northern Africa.
Corpus desk
Index EN-tobe · tobe · English
tobe · rank #49,100 · 5 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #49,100
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 5 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH tik
Nearest frequency peer: tik (-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.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “tobe”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- tidbit
tidbit
50,903 corpus weight
- tik
tik
50,902 corpus weight
- tobe
tobe
50,901 corpus weight
- toma
toma
50,900 corpus weight
- torturous
torturous
50,898 corpus weight
- torus
torus
50,897 corpus weight
What this shows “tobe” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | tobe |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /təʊb/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #49,100 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “tobe”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 5 spelling variants around tobe (IPA /təʊb/), anoun. Corpus frequency is #49,100 among 3,151 “T” headwords. Dominant gloss: "A cotton garment worn in parts of northern Africa.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for tobe, with forms such as "otbe", "tboe", and "tobbe". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "too", "top", "tom", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is tobe, spelled T-O-B-E.
Definition
- 1A cotton garment worn in parts of northern Africa.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how tobe appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It consists, for men and women alike, of a ‘tobe,’ or straight piece of cotton cloth (printed, or white with a crimson border), two breadths wide, and some twelve feet long, draped in graceful folds about the body, and fastened on the left shoulder.
She loved travelling to Egypt, and how she didn’t have to wear a tobe in Cairo.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- otbe
- tboe
- tobbe
- toeb
- ttobe
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of tobe - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 "tobe", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (5 here; floor ≥5).