Which to use
“meal” and “mela” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #3,113
- “meal” frequency rank
- #49,487
- “mela” frequency rank
- 52600
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | meal | mela |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Food that is prepared and eaten, usually at a specific time, and usually in a comparatively large quantity. | A Hindu religious festival. |
Letter map: meal vs mela
Shared letters muted; letters that set meal and mela apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. meal (CVVC) and mela (CVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.
Corpus notes: meal and mela
meal and mela 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 only by swapping two adjacent letters (al ↔ la) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52600, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
meal is recorded at frequency rank #3,113, classified as anoun, pronounced /miːl/. mela is at rank #49,487, 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 52600, this pair ranks #155,717 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of meal vs mela
Shared letters: aelm. Private to "meal": -. Private to "mela": -.
"meal" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "mela" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "meal" for "mela" ever safe?
Which is more common, "meal" or "mela"?
What to do next
You've compared "meal" and "mela". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "meal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "mela" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #155,717 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "meal" and "mela" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mela vs MPAA". 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 #155,717 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.