MadevsmileWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#7,362
“Made” frequency rank
#42,680
“mile” frequency rank
50042
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Made mile
Definition Larve einer Fliege Meile

Where the eye mixes Made and mile

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

Why the eye confuses Made with mile

A purely visual mix-up. Made ([ˈmaːdə]) and mile ([maɪl]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50042, 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]. mile is at rank #42,680, tagged as anoun, pronounced [maɪl].

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 50042, this pair ranks #1,188,800 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Made vs mile

Shared letters: em. Private to "Made": ad. Private to "mile": il.

"Made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mile" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Made ← amde · madde · maed · mdae · mmade
  • mile ← imle · miel · mlie · mmile

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Made" for "mile" ever safe?
No. They are said differently ([ˈmaːdə] versus [maɪl]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "Made" or "mile"?
"Made" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,362 in our German list, against #42,680 for "mile". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Made" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mile" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,188,800 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Made" and "mile" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mile vs Milfs". 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 #1,188,800 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