marredvsmiredWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: marred is a adjective, mired is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“marred” is an adjective and “mired” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,839
“marred” frequency rank
#36,669
“mired” frequency rank
62508
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marred mired
Definition Spoiled; harmed or damaged. A unit of measurement for color temperature.

Letter map: marred vs mired

Shared letters muted; letters that set marred and mired apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. marred runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against mired's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
marred
5 ch
mired

Part-of-speech tell for marred / mired

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: marred is anadjective and miredanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62508, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marred is recorded at frequency rank #25,839, classified as anadj, pronounced /mɑːd/. mired is at rank #36,669, tagged as anoun.

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 62508, this pair ranks #88,101 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of marred vs mired

Shared letters: demr. Private to "marred": a. Private to "mired": i.

"marred" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "mired" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marred ← amrred · mared · marerd · marrde · marredd · mmarred · mrared
  • mired ← imred · mierd · mirde · miredd · mirred · mmired · mried

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "marred" and "mired" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marred" is an adjective and "mired" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "marred" or "mired"?
"marred" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,839 in our English list, against #36,669 for "mired". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "marred" and "mired". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marred" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mired" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #88,101 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marred" and "mired" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mired vs miser". 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 #88,101 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