mead vs met, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“mead” is a noun and “met” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#16,528
“mead” frequency rank: #853
“met” frequency rank: 17381
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	mead	met
Definition	An alcoholic drink fermented from honey and water.	simple past and past participle of meet

Where the spellings diverge

Shared letters are muted; the letters that actually set mead and met apart are highlighted. They share 2 letters in sequence, which is exactly why the eye skips the difference.

4 ch

mead

3 ch

met

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mead is /miːd/ while met is /mɛt/. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17381, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mead is recorded at frequency rank #16,528, classified as anoun, pronounced /miːd/. met is at rank #853, tagged as averb, pronounced /mɛt/.

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 17381, this pair ranks #451,791 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mead vs met

Shared letters: em. Private to "mead": ad. Private to "met": t.

"mead" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "met" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

mead ← emad · meadd · meda · mmead

Frequency comparison

mead#16,528

met#853

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "mead" and "met" be used interchangeably?

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

Which is more common, "mead" or "met"?

"met" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #853 in our English list, against #16,528 for "mead". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Remembering mead vs met

The fastest way to pick the right one every time.

Check the role first: if you need a noun, it's “mead”; for a verb, it's “met”.
See each word in full, definition, IPA, etymology and its other confusables. Full “mead” entry
Browse more pairs most likely to be confused. Most confusable