mau
[maʊ̯]
The verdict
“mau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #17,357) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #17,357
- frequency rank, German
- 3,571
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - sich nicht ganz wohl fühlend
Corpus desk
Index DE-mau · mau · German
mau · rank #17,357 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #17,357
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,571
- PHOTO-FINISH materielle
Nearest frequency peer: materielle (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Häufigkeitsnachbarn des Verwechslers „mau“
Peers mit ähnlichem Corpus-Gewicht, getrennt von den Verwechslungspaaren unten
- lächelte
lächelte
82,647 corpus weight
- Lüften
Lüften
82,646 corpus weight
- materielle
materielle
82,645 corpus weight
- mau
mau
82,644 corpus weight
- Melissa
Melissa
82,643 corpus weight
- misshandelt
misshandelt
82,641 corpus weight
What this shows Balken platzieren „mau“ gegen die nächsten gerankten deutschen Lemmata, kein Reprint der Verwechslungsdesk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | mau |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | [maʊ̯] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #17,357 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus-Rang neben Verwechslern von „mau“
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for mau is neighbouring look-alikes ("mm", "me", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced [maʊ̯]. Frequency #17,357 among 3,571 “M” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Zero misspellings are on record for mau in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "mm", "me", "my", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is mau, spelled M-A-U.
Definition
- 1sich nicht ganz wohl fühlend
- 2(quantitativ und/oder qualitativ) nicht ausreichend
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how mau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Der Anblick flößte mir ein maues Gefühl ein.
„Sie sei eben eine Ur-Dresdenerin, und da er an Dresden hänge wie sie, könne sie ihm nichts abschlagen. Er ließ ihr je einhundert West als Anzahlung für Buffet und Bild. Sie solle sich etwas gönnen im Intershop. Mir is heute tichtch mau, sagte sie.“
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "mau", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked German headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).