MadevsMaiTell them apart

Which to use

“Made” and “Mai” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#7,362
“Made” frequency rank
#586
“Mai” frequency rank
7948
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Made Mai
Definition Larve einer Fliege der fünfte Monat im Jahr

Where the eye mixes Made and Mai

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
Made
3 ch
Mai

Look-alike desk: Made vs Mai

A purely visual mix-up. Made ([ˈmaːdə]) and Mai ([maɪ̯]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7948, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Made is recorded at frequency rank #7,362, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈmaːdə]. Mai is at rank #586, tagged as anoun, pronounced [maɪ̯].

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 7948, this pair ranks #1,986,219 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Made vs Mai

Shared letters: am. Private to "Made": de. Private to "Mai": i.

"Made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Mai" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Madeamde · madde · maed · mdae · mmade

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Made" and "Mai" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently ([ˈmaːdə] versus [maɪ̯]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "Made" or "Mai"?
"Mai" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #586 in our German list, against #7,362 for "Made". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "Made" and "Mai" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Made" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Mai" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,986,219 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Made" and "Mai" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Made vs Matze". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #1,986,219 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list