madevsmemeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#126
“made” frequency rank
#8,170
“meme” frequency rank
8296
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature made meme
Definition A grub or maggot. Any unit of (originally cultural) information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes.

Where the eye mixes made and meme

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

4 ch
made
4 ch
meme

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. made (/meːd/) and meme (/miːm/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8296, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

made is recorded at frequency rank #126, classified as anoun, pronounced /meːd/. meme is at rank #8,170, tagged as anoun, pronounced /miːm/.

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 8296, this pair ranks #503,197 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of made vs meme

Shared letters: em. Private to "made": ad. Private to "meme": -.

"made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "meme" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • madeamde · madde · maed · mdae · mmade
  • memeemme · meem · memme · mmee · mmeme

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "made" and "meme" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/meːd/ versus /miːm/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "made" or "meme"?
"made" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #126 in our English list, against #8,170 for "meme". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list