madevsmodeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#126
“made” frequency rank
#2,357
“mode” frequency rank
2483
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature made mode
Definition A grub or maggot. One of several common scales in modern Western music, one of which corresponds to the modern major scale and one to the natural minor scale.

Where the eye mixes made and mode

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
made
4 ch
mode

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. made (/meːd/) and mode (/moʊd/) 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 a single letter - a in “made” becomes o in “mode”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2483, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

made is recorded at frequency rank #126, classified as anoun, pronounced /meːd/. mode is at rank #2,357, tagged as anoun, pronounced /moʊd/.

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 2483, this pair ranks #524,856 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of made vs mode

Shared letters: dem. Private to "made": a. Private to "mode": o.

"made" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mode" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • madeamde · madde · maed · mdae · mmade
  • modemdoe · mmode · modde · moed · omde

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "made" and "mode" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/meːd/ versus /moʊd/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "made" or "mode"?
"made" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #126 in our English list, against #2,357 for "mode". 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