maasvsmacTell them apart

Which to use

“maas” and “mac” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#46,597
“maas” frequency rank
#3,313
“mac” frequency rank
49910
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maas mac
Definition sour milk Clipping of mackintosh (“a raincoat”).

Where the eye mixes maas and mac

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

4 ch
maas
3 ch
mac

Visual trap between maas and mac

A purely visual mix-up. maas (/mɑːs/) and mac (/mæk/) 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 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49910, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maas is recorded at frequency rank #46,597, classified as anoun, pronounced /mɑːs/. mac is at rank #3,313, tagged as anoun, pronounced /mæk/.

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 49910, this pair ranks #179,144 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maas vs mac

Shared letters: am. Private to "maas": s. Private to "mac": c.

"maas" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "mac" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maas" for "mac" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/mɑːs/ versus /mæk/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "maas" or "mac"?
"mac" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,313 in our English list, against #46,597 for "maas". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "maas" and "mac" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mac" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #179,144 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maas" and "mac" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maas vs MPAA". 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 #179,144 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