macevsmeeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: mace is a noun, mee is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mace” is a noun and “mee” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#18,879
“mace” frequency rank
#28,288
“mee” frequency rank
47167
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mace mee
Definition A heavy fighting club. Obsolete spelling of me.

Where the eye mixes mace and mee

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

4 ch
mace
3 ch
mee

Visual trap between mace and mee

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mace is /meɪs/ while mee is /miː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs pronoun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47167, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mace is recorded at frequency rank #18,879, classified as anoun, pronounced /meɪs/. mee is at rank #28,288, tagged as apron, pronounced /miː/.

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 47167, this pair ranks #204,928 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mace vs mee

Shared letters: em. Private to "mace": ac. Private to "mee": -.

"mace" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mee" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maceamce · macce · maec · mcae · mmace

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mace" and "mee" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mace" is a noun and "mee" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "mace" or "mee" show up more?
"mace" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,879 in our English list, against #28,288 for "mee". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mace" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mee" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #204,928 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mace" and "mee" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mee vs MMP". 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 #204,928 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