maasvsmanusWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#46,597
“maas” frequency rank
#33,726
“manus” frequency rank
80323
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maas manus
Definition sour milk A hand, as the part of the fore limb below the forearm in a human, or the corresponding part in other vertebrates.

Where the eye mixes maas and manus

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. maas runs 4 letters (CVVC) against manus's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
maas
5 ch
manus

Why the eye confuses maas with manus

A purely visual mix-up. maas (/mɑːs/) and manus (/ˈmeɪnəs/) 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 80323, 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/. manus is at rank #33,726, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmeɪnəs/.

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 80323, this pair ranks #20,060 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maas vs manus

Shared letters: ams. Private to "maas": -. Private to "manus": nu.

"maas" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "manus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maas ← mmaas
  • manus ← amnus · mannus · mansu · manuss · mauns · mmanus · mnaus

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "maas" and "manus" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/mɑːs/ versus /ˈmeɪnəs/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "maas" or "manus"?
"manus" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,726 in our English list, against #46,597 for "maas". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "maas" and "manus" 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 "manus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #20,060 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maas" and "manus" 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 #20,060 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