mabvsmaruWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#47,175
“mab” frequency rank
#33,730
“maru” frequency rank
80905
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mab maru
Definition A slattern. A Japanese ship, especially a merchant ship.

Letter map: mab vs maru

Shared letters muted; letters that set mab and maru apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. mab runs 3 letters (CVC) against maru's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
mab
4 ch
maru

Spelling & dictionary notes on mab vs maru

mab and maru are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80905, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mab is recorded at frequency rank #47,175, classified as anoun. maru is at rank #33,730, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmɑːɹuː/.

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 80905, this pair ranks #18,817 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mab vs maru

Shared letters: am. Private to "mab": b. Private to "maru": ru.

"mab" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "maru" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maru ← amru · marru · maur · mmaru · mrau

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mab" for "maru" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "mab" or "maru" show up more?
"maru" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,730 in our English list, against #47,175 for "mab". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mab" and "maru".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mab" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "maru" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,817 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mab" and "maru" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mab 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 #18,817 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