ne

adv

The verdict

“ne” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #8,998) as an adverb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#8,998
frequency rank, Spanish
1,151
“N” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - No.

Corpus desk

Index ES-ne · ne · Spanish

ne · rank #8,998 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #8,998
  • LEN-SHORT 2 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 1,151
  • PHOTO-FINISH nacen

Nearest frequency peer: nacen (-1 rank slots)

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.

Vecinos de frecuencia del confusable “ne”

Pares de peso similar en el corpus, aparte de los confusables abajo

corpus weight

What this shows Las barras sitúan “ne” frente a los lemas españoles más cercanos por rango, no un reprint del escritorio de confusables.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

ne vs no
50% similar
ne vs ny
50% similar
ne vs nm
50% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for ne
PropertyValue
Headwordne
LanguageSpanish
Part of speechAdverb
Letters2
Frequency rank#8,998
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rango de corpus junto a confusables de “ne”

La frecuencia va del puñado de palabras que usamos sin parar (izquierda) a la cola larga que apenas aparece (derecha).necae aquí:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Los ticks avanzan en logaritmo; cada uno es del orden de diez veces más raro. En la misma franja de rareza aparecen “nacen” (#8,997), “Nigeria” (#9,000), “mortalidad” (#8,995). Entre 1,151 lemas con “N”, “ne” va en #8,998. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for ne is neighbouring look-alikes ("no", "ny", …), not just typos; it is anadverb. Frequency #8,998 among 1,151 “N” headwords. Gloss: "No.".

ne doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "no", "ny", "nm", 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, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Spanish form is ne, spelled N-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    No.

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how ne appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. ne zeuio ket «no viene».

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

How do you spell "ne"?
"ne" is spelled N-E.
What does "ne" mean?
As an adverb, "ne" means: No.
What words are commonly confused with "ne"?
"ne" is commonly confused with "no", "ny", "nm". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
What language does "ne" come from?
"ne" is a Spanish word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list