boa
[ˈboa]
The verdict
“boa” is a moderately-common Spanish word, ranked #28,259 in Spanish word frequency and used as a noun.
- #28,259
- frequency rank, Spanish
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Género de serpientes constrictoras y no venenosas de la familia Boinae distribuidas en América, desde México hasta el centro de la Argentina, África, Madagascar y la isla de la Reunión. El género c...
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 | boa |
| Language | Spanish |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [ˈboa] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #28,259 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “boa” sits in Spanish frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The Spanish entry for boa is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ˈboa]. Corpus data places it at rank #28,259 in overall Spanish word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for boa in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "bu", "Bob", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct Spanish form is boa, spelled B-O-A.
Definition
- 1Género de serpientes constrictoras y no venenosas de la familia Boinae distribuidas en América, desde México hasta el centro de la Argentina, África, Madagascar y la isla de la Reunión. El género contiene 4 especies vivientes y la mayor y más conocida es la Boa Constrictor con una longitud que puede variar entre 4 o 3 metros.
- 2Prenda femenina de vestir que consiste en una bufanda de plumas que se coloca rodeando al cuello.
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 Spanish corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “boa”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Spanish spelling is B-O-A - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ˈboa] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “by” - see the side-by-side comparison. boa vs by
- Browse more Spanish words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Spanish words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.