maidenvsmailenWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: maiden is a noun, mailen is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maiden” is a noun and “mailen” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,670
“maiden” frequency rank
#49,065
“mailen” frequency rank
91735
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maiden mailen
Definition die Maid, die Magd eine E-Mail versenden, schicken

Letter map: maiden vs mailen

Shared letters muted; letters that set maiden and mailen apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. maiden and mailen follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
maiden
6 ch
mailen

Role in the sentence - maiden and mailen

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maiden is anoun and mailenaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - d in “maiden” becomes l in “mailen”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 91735, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maiden is recorded at frequency rank #42,670, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. mailen is at rank #49,065, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈmɛɪ̯lən].

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 91735, this pair ranks #35,446 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maiden vs mailen

Shared letters: aeimn. Private to "maiden": d. Private to "mailen": l.

"maiden" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "mailen" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maiden ← amiden · madien · maidden · maidenn · maidne · maiedn · miaden · mmaiden
  • mailen ← amilen · maieln · mailenn · maillen · mailne · malien · mialen · mmailen

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maiden" for "mailen" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maiden" is a noun and "mailen" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "maiden" or "mailen"?
"maiden" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,670 in our German list, against #49,065 for "mailen". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "maiden" vs "mailen" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maiden" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mailen" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #35,446 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maiden" and "mailen" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Madsen vs mailen". 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 #35,446 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