Which to use
“manus” is a noun and “minus” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #33,726
- “manus” frequency rank
- #7,158
- “minus” frequency rank
- 40884
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | manus | minus |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A hand, as the part of the fore limb below the forearm in a human, or the corresponding part in other vertebrates. | Made less or reduced by (followed by an expression of number or quantity). |
Where the eye mixes manus and minus
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. manus and minus follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between manus and minus
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: manus is /ˈmeɪnəs/ while minus is /ˈmaɪ.nəs/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - a in “manus” becomes i in “minus”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs preposition), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40884, 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/. minus is at rank #7,158, tagged as aprep, pronounced /ˈmaɪ.nəs/.
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 40884, this pair ranks #263,546 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of manus vs minus
Shared letters: mnsu. Private to "manus": a. Private to "minus": i.
"manus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "minus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "manus" and "minus" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "manus" or "minus" show up more?
What to do next
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "manus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "minus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #263,546 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "manus" and "minus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "magus vs manus". 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 #263,546 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.