maxivsmexWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#20,702
“maxi” frequency rank
#30,134
“mex” frequency rank
50836
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maxi mex
Definition Having a hemline at ankle length. The mex of a subset of a well-ordered set is the smallest value from the whole set that does not belong to the subset.

Letter map: maxi vs mex

Shared letters muted; letters that set maxi and mex apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
maxi
3 ch
mex

Part-of-speech tell for maxi / mex

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maxi is anadjective and mexanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50836, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maxi is recorded at frequency rank #20,702, classified as anadj. mex is at rank #30,134, 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 50836, this pair ranks #170,729 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maxi vs mex

Shared letters: mx. Private to "maxi": ai. Private to "mex": e.

"maxi" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mex" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maxiamxi · maix · maxxi · mmaxi · mxai

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maxi" for "mex" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maxi" is an adjective and "mex" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "maxi" or "mex" show up more?
"maxi" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,702 in our English list, against #30,134 for "mex". 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 "maxi" and "mex". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maxi" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mex" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #170,729 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maxi" and "mex" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mex vs MMP". 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 #170,729 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