marevsMawrWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#13,015
“mare” frequency rank
#48,889
“Mawr” frequency rank
61904
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mare Mawr
Definition An adult female horse. A community (civil parish) in the City and County of Swansea, Wales.

Letter map: mare vs Mawr

Shared letters muted; letters that set mare and Mawr apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
mare
4 ch
Mawr

Role in the sentence - mare and Mawr

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mare is anoun and Mawraname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61904, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mare is recorded at frequency rank #13,015, classified as anoun, 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 61904, this pair ranks #91,491 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mare vs Mawr

Shared letters: amr. Private to "mare": e. Private to "Mawr": w.

"mare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Mawr" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mareamre · maer · marre · mmare · mrae
  • Mawramwr · marw · mawrr · mawwr · mmawr · mwar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mare" for "Mawr" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mare" is a noun and "Mawr" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mare" or "Mawr"?
"mare" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,015 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.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "mare" 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 #91,491 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mare" 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 #91,491 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