VHS
"vhs" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“VHS” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #19,733) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #19,733
- frequency rank, English
- 969
- “V” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A type of videotape originally developed by the Japanese company JVC.
Corpus desk
Index EN-vhs · VHS · English
VHS · rank #19,733 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #19,733
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-0 0 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 969
- PHOTO-FINISH Venetian
Nearest frequency peer: Venetian (-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 “VHS”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- unspecified
unspecified
80,272 corpus weight
- veg
veg
80,270 corpus weight
- Venetian
Venetian
80,269 corpus weight
- VHS
VHS
80,268 corpus weight
- waffle
waffle
80,267 corpus weight
- Wanda
Wanda
80,266 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “VHS” 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 | VHS |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #19,733 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “VHS”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for VHS is neighbouring look-alikes ("vi", "VR", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #19,733 among 969 “V” headwords. Gloss: "A type of videotape originally developed by the Japanese company JVC.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for VHS, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "vi", "VR", "VP", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: Initialism of Vertical Helical Scan, later reinterpreted as Video Home System. The correct English form is VHS, spelled V-H-S.
Definition
- 1A type of videotape originally developed by the Japanese company JVC.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how VHS appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
The curt take on VHS is that it is a dead format, a quaint and sham way to watch a movie. Regardless, to date, there are quantities of VHS titles not available on DVD, and that may never be.
There is, it turns out, much demand for these old VHS tapes, price tags notwithstanding, and despite post-2006 advancements in technology.
Etymology
Initialism of Vertical Helical Scan, later reinterpreted as Video Home System.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "VHS", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).