maimedvsmiredConfusable pair

Quick tell: maimed is a adjective, mired is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maimed” is an adjective and “mired” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#36,651
“maimed” frequency rank
#36,669
“mired” frequency rank
73320
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maimed mired
Definition Partially or wholly deprived of the use of some part of the body, usually by wounding or injury. A unit of measurement for color temperature.

Letter map: maimed vs mired

Shared letters muted; letters that set maimed and mired apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. maimed runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against mired's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
maimed
5 ch
mired

Grammar separator: maimed vs mired

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maimed is anadjective and miredanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73320, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maimed is recorded at frequency rank #36,651, classified as anadj, pronounced /meɪmd/. mired is at rank #36,669, tagged as anoun.

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 73320, this pair ranks #40,032 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maimed vs mired

Shared letters: deim. Private to "maimed": a. Private to "mired": r.

"maimed" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "mired" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maimed ← amimed · maiemd · maimde · maimedd · maimmed · mamied · miamed · mmaimed
  • mired ← imred · mierd · mirde · miredd · mirred · mmired · mried

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maimed" and "mired" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maimed" is an adjective and "mired" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "maimed" or "mired" show up more?
"maimed" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,651 in our English list, against #36,669 for "mired". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "maimed" and "mired".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maimed" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mired" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #40,032 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maimed" and "mired" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mired 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 #40,032 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