matevsMBEWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“mate” and “MBE” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#2,743
“mate” frequency rank
#31,650
“MBE” frequency rank
34393
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mate MBE
Definition A fellow, comrade, colleague, partner or someone with whom something is shared, e.g. shipmate, classmate. Initialism of Member of the Order of the British Empire, a British honour originally intended for non-combatants in World War One.

Letter map: mate vs MBE

Shared letters muted; letters that set mate and MBE apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
mate
3 ch
MBE

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

mate and MBE are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 34393, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mate is recorded at frequency rank #2,743, classified as anoun, pronounced /meɪt/. MBE is at rank #31,650, 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 34393, this pair ranks #321,206 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mate vs MBE

Shared letters: em. Private to "mate": at. Private to "MBE": b.

"mate" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "MBE" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mateamte · mmate · mtae

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "mate" and "MBE" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "mate" or "MBE"?
"mate" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,743 in our English list, against #31,650 for "MBE". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list