Which to use
“made” and “mates” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #126
- “made” frequency rank
- #7,248
- “mates” frequency rank
- 7374
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | made | mates |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A grub or maggot. | plural of mate |
Where the eye mixes made and mates
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. made (/meːd/) and mates (/meɪts/) 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 7374, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
made is recorded at frequency rank #126, classified as anoun, pronounced /meːd/. mates is at rank #7,248, tagged as anoun, pronounced /meɪts/.
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 7374, this pair ranks #507,395 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of made vs mates
Shared letters: aem. Private to "made": d. Private to "mates": st.
"made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "mates" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC