makivsMIRITell them apart

Quick tell: maki is a noun, MIRI is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maki” is a noun and “MIRI” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#31,647
“maki” frequency rank
#46,627
“MIRI” frequency rank
78274
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maki MIRI
Definition A ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta). Acronym of Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

Letter map: maki vs MIRI

Shared letters muted; letters that set maki and MIRI apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. maki and MIRI follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
maki
4 ch
MIRI

Grammar separator: maki vs MIRI

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maki is anoun and MIRIaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78274, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maki is recorded at frequency rank #31,647, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmɑːki/. MIRI is at rank #46,627, 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 78274, this pair ranks #25,025 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maki vs MIRI

Shared letters: im. Private to "maki": ak. Private to "MIRI": r.

"maki" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "MIRI" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maki ← amki · maik · makki · mkai · mmaki
  • MIRI ← imri · miir · mirri · mmiri · mrii

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maki" for "MIRI" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maki" is a noun and "MIRI" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "maki" vs "MIRI" - which ranks higher?
"maki" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,647 in our English list, against #46,627 for "MIRI". 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 "maki" and "MIRI".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maki" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "MIRI" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,025 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maki" and "MIRI" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marl vs MIRI". 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 #25,025 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