mailervsmailsConfusable pair

Quick tell: mailer is a noun, mails is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mailer” is a noun and “mails” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,248
“mailer” frequency rank
#12,635
“mails” frequency rank
43883
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mailer mails
Definition One who sends mail. third-person singular simple present indicative of mail

Letter map: mailer vs mails

Shared letters muted; letters that set mailer and mails apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

6 ch
mailer
5 ch
mails

Part-of-speech tell for mailer / mails

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mailer is anoun and mailsaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43883, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mailer is recorded at frequency rank #31,248, classified as anoun. mails is at rank #12,635, tagged as averb, pronounced /meɪlz/.

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 43883, this pair ranks #235,785 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mailer vs mails

Shared letters: ailm. Private to "mailer": er. Private to "mails": s.

"mailer" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "mails" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maileramiler · maielr · mailerr · mailler · mailre · malier · mialer · mmailer
  • mailsamils · maills · mailss · maisl · malis · mials · mmails

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mailer" for "mails" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mailer" is a noun and "mails" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mailer" vs "mails" - which ranks higher?
"mails" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,635 in our English list, against #31,248 for "mailer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "mailer" and "mails". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mailer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mails" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #235,785 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mailer" and "mails" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mailer vs miser". 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 #235,785 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