MadevsmalaWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Made is a noun, mala is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Made” is a noun and “mala” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,362
“Made” frequency rank
#45,440
“mala” frequency rank
52802
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Made mala
Definition Larve einer Fliege verkehrt, umgekehrt, gegenteilig, entgegengesetzt

Letter map: Made vs mala

Shared letters muted; letters that set Made and mala apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. Made and mala follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
Made
4 ch
mala

Part-of-speech tell for Made / mala

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Made is anoun and malaanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52802, 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]. mala is at rank #45,440, tagged as anadj.

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 52802, this pair ranks #1,082,715 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Made vs mala

Shared letters: am. Private to "Made": de. Private to "mala": l.

"Made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mala" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Made ← amde · madde · maed · mdae · mmade
  • mala ← maal · malla · mlaa · mmala

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Made" and "mala" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Made" is a noun and "mala" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Made" or "mala" show up more?
"Made" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,362 in our German list, against #45,440 for "mala". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "Made" vs "mala" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Made" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mala" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,082,715 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Made" and "mala" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mala vs mora". 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 #1,082,715 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