bah

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The verdict

“bah” is a moderately-common Portuguese word, ranked #30,437 in Portuguese word frequency and used as an interjection.

#30,437
frequency rank, Portuguese
3
letters
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - expressa espanto ou admiração

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)

Where “bah” sits in Portuguese frequency

Every-word frequency runs from the handful of words we use constantly (left) to the long tail used once in a blue moon (right). bah lands here:

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

Scale is logarithmic (each tick is 10× rarer). Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The Portuguese entry for bah is 3 letters long, classified as an interjection. Corpus data places it at rank #30,437 in overall Portuguese word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "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

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.

Using “bah”

The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.

  • The one correct Portuguese spelling is B-A-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
  • Don't mix it up with “by” - see the side-by-side comparison. bah vs by
  • Browse more Portuguese words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Portuguese 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.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list FrequencyWords open word-frequency list