MadevsModeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#7,362
“Made” frequency rank
#3,331
“Mode” frequency rank
10693
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Made Mode
Definition Larve einer Fliege Brauch, Gewohnheit, Sitte

Where the eye mixes Made and Mode

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. Made and Mode 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
Mode

Look-alike desk: Made vs Mode

A purely visual mix-up. Made ([ˈmaːdə]) and Mode ([ˈmoːdə]) 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 a single letter - a in “Made” becomes o in “Mode”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10693, 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]. Mode is at rank #3,331, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈmoːdə].

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 10693, this pair ranks #1,973,824 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Made vs Mode

Shared letters: dem. Private to "Made": a. Private to "Mode": o.

"Made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Mode" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Madeamde · madde · maed · mdae · mmade
  • Modemdoe · mmode · modde · moed · omde

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Made" for "Mode" ever safe?
No. They are said differently ([ˈmaːdə] versus [ˈmoːdə]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "Made" or "Mode"?
"Mode" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,331 in our German list, against #7,362 for "Made". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "Made" and "Mode" 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 "Mode" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,973,824 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Made" and "Mode" 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 #1,973,824 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