mairvsMawrWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: mair is a adjective, Mawr is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mair” is an adjective and “Mawr” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,249
“mair” frequency rank
#48,889
“Mawr” frequency rank
92138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mair Mawr
Definition more A community (civil parish) in the City and County of Swansea, Wales.

Letter map: mair vs Mawr

Shared letters muted; letters that set mair and Mawr apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. mair (CVVC) and Mawr (CVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
mair
4 ch
Mawr

Part-of-speech tell for mair / Mawr

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mair is anadjective and Mawraname. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “mair” becomes w in “Mawr”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 92138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mair is recorded at frequency rank #43,249, classified as anadj, pronounced /mɛə/. Mawr is at rank #48,889, 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 92138, this pair ranks #2,803 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mair vs Mawr

Shared letters: amr. Private to "mair": i. Private to "Mawr": w.

"mair" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "Mawr" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mair ← mairr · mmair
  • Mawr ← amwr · marw · mawrr · mawwr · mmawr · mwar

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "mair" and "Mawr" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mair" is an adjective and "Mawr" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mair" vs "Mawr" - which ranks higher?
"mair" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #43,249 in our English list, against #48,889 for "Mawr". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mair" and "Mawr".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mair" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Mawr" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #2,803 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mair" and "Mawr" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marl vs Mawr". 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 #2,803 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