bah

intj

The verdict

“bah” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #30,437) as an interjection. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#30,437
frequency rank, Portuguese
840
“B” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - expressa espanto ou admiração

Corpus desk

Index PT-bah · bah · Portuguese

bah · rank #30,437 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #30,437
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 840
  • PHOTO-FINISH baião

Nearest frequency peer: baião (+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.

Vizinhos de frequência do confusável “bah”

Pares de peso semelhante no corpus, aparte dos confusáveis abaixo

corpus weight

What this shows As barras situam “bah” face aos lemas portugueses mais próximos por rank, não um reprint da secretária de confusáveis.

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).

bah vs by
33% similar
bah vs BR
0% similar
bah vs bi
33% similar

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

Key facts for bah
PropertyValue
Headwordbah
LanguagePortuguese
Part of speechInterjection
Letters3
Frequency rank#30,437
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rank de corpus junto a confusáveis de “bah”

Esta escala corre do núcleo do português quotidiano (esquerda) até o rastro de formas raras (direita).bahcai aqui:

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

A escala é logarítmica (cada marca ≈ 10× mais rara). Na mesma faixa de raridade aparecem “baião” (#30,438), “avental” (#30,435), “beneficiamento” (#30,441). Entre 840 lemas com “B”, “bah” fica em #30,437. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for bah is neighbouring look-alikes ("by", "BR", …), not just typos; it is aninterjection. Frequency #30,437 among 840 “B” headwords. Gloss: "expressa espanto ou admiração".

No generated misspelling entries exist for bah in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable Portuguese patterns. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BR", "bi", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.

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 Portuguese form is bah, spelled B-A-H.

Definition

  1. 1
    expressa espanto ou admiração

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. Bah! Mas que tombo feio que tu levaste, tchê!
  2. Bah! Mas que cavalo lindo!

Synonyms

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 Portuguese corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "bah"?
"bah" is spelled B-A-H.
What does "bah" mean?
As an interjection, "bah" means: expressa espanto ou admiração
What words are commonly confused with "bah"?
"bah" is commonly confused with "by", "BR", "bi". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
What language does "bah" come from?
"bah" is a Portuguese 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.

Similar Portuguese words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "bah", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked Portuguese headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list