maimvsMamieTell them apart

Quick tell: maim is a verb, Mamie is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maim” is a verb and “Mamie” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,918
“maim” frequency rank
#44,322
“Mamie” frequency rank
89240
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maim Mamie
Definition To wound seriously; to cause permanent loss of function of a limb or part of the body. A diminutive of Mary or Mavis, also used as a formal female given name.

Letter map: maim vs Mamie

Shared letters muted; letters that set maim and Mamie apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. maim runs 4 letters (CVVC) against Mamie's 5 (CVCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
maim
5 ch
Mamie

Part-of-speech tell for maim / Mamie

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maim is averb and Mamieaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 89240, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maim is recorded at frequency rank #44,918, classified as averb, pronounced /meɪm/. Mamie is at rank #44,322, tagged as aname.

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 89240, this pair ranks #5,425 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maim vs Mamie

Shared letters: aim. Private to "maim": -. Private to "Mamie": e.

"maim" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "Mamie" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maim ← amim · maimm · mmaim
  • Mamie ← ammie · maime · mamei · mammie · mmaie · mmamie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maim" and "Mamie" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maim" is a verb and "Mamie" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "maim" vs "Mamie" - which ranks higher?
"Mamie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #44,322 in our English list, against #44,918 for "maim". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "maim" vs "Mamie" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maim" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Mamie" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #5,425 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maim" and "Mamie" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maim vs marl". 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 #5,425 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