manusvsMayesTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#33,726
“manus” frequency rank
#46,054
“Mayes” frequency rank
79780
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature manus Mayes
Definition A hand, as the part of the fore limb below the forearm in a human, or the corresponding part in other vertebrates. A surname.

Letter map: manus vs Mayes

Shared letters muted; letters that set manus and Mayes apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. manus (CVCVC) and Mayes (CVVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
manus
5 ch
Mayes

Part-of-speech tell for manus / Mayes

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: manus is anoun and Mayesaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79780, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

manus is recorded at frequency rank #33,726, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmeɪnəs/. Mayes is at rank #46,054, 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 79780, this pair ranks #21,304 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of manus vs Mayes

Shared letters: ams. Private to "manus": nu. Private to "Mayes": ey.

"manus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "Mayes" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • manus ← amnus · mannus · mansu · manuss · mauns · mmanus · mnaus
  • Mayes ← amyes · maeys · mayess · mayse · mayyes · mmayes · myaes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "manus" and "Mayes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "manus" is a noun and "Mayes" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "manus" or "Mayes" show up more?
"manus" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,726 in our English list, against #46,054 for "Mayes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "manus" vs "Mayes" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "manus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Mayes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #21,304 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "manus" and "Mayes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "magus vs Mayes". 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 #21,304 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