AMIvsamissWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: AMI is a name, amiss is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“AMI” is a name and “amiss” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#19,519
“AMI” frequency rank
#31,430
“amiss” frequency rank
50949
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature AMI amiss
Definition Initialism of American Media Inc.. Wrong; faulty; out of order; improper or otherwise incorrect.

Letter map: AMI vs amiss

Shared letters muted; letters that set AMI and amiss apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
AMI
5 ch
amiss

Part-of-speech tell for AMI / amiss

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: AMI is aname and amissanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “AMI” sits inside “amiss”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50949, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

AMI is recorded at frequency rank #19,519, classified as aname. amiss is at rank #31,430, tagged as anadj, pronounced /əˈmɪs/.

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 50949, this pair ranks #169,727 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of AMI vs amiss

Shared letters: aim. Private to "AMI": -. Private to "amiss": s.

"AMI" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "amiss" · 5 letters · shape VCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • amissammiss · amsis

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "AMI" for "amiss" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "AMI" is a name and "amiss" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "AMI" vs "amiss" - which ranks higher?
"AMI" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,519 in our English list, against #31,430 for "amiss". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "AMI" and "amiss".

  • Full dictionary entry for "AMI" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "amiss" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #169,727 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "AMI" and "amiss" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "amiss vs amuses". 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 #169,727 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list