maw vs my, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“maw” is a noun and “my” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,495
“maw” frequency rank: #27
“my” frequency rank: 30522
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	maw	my
Definition	The stomach, especially of an animal.	First-person singular possessive determiner. See Appendix:Possessive#English.

Where the eye mixes maw and my

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch

maw

2 ch

Visual trap between maw and my

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: maw is /mɔː/ while my is /maɪ/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30522, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maw is recorded at frequency rank #30,495, classified as anoun, pronounced /mɔː/. my is at rank #27, tagged as adet, pronounced /maɪ/.

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 30522, this pair ranks #353,854 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maw vs my

Shared letters: m. Private to "maw": aw. Private to "my": y.

"maw" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "my" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maw" for "my" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maw" is a noun and "my" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "maw" or "my"?

"my" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27 in our English list, against #30,495 for "maw". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

Full dictionary entry for "maw" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "my" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #353,854 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"maw" and "my" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maw vs MPAA". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #353,854 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.