Which to use
“Mears” is a name and “mere” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #41,760
- “Mears” frequency rank
- #5,812
- “mere” frequency rank
- 47572
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Mears | mere |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A surname from Old English. | Just, only; no more than, pure and simple, neither more nor better than might be expected. |
Letter map: Mears vs mere
Shared letters muted; letters that set Mears and mere apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.
Part-of-speech tell for Mears / mere
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Mears is aname and mereanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47572, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
Mears is recorded at frequency rank #41,760, classified as aname. mere is at rank #5,812, tagged as anadj, pronounced /mɪə̯/.
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 47572, this pair ranks #201,189 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of Mears vs mere
Shared letters: emr. Private to "Mears": as. Private to "mere": -.
"Mears" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC · "mere" · 4 letters · shape CVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "Mears" and "mere" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "Mears" or "mere"?
Useful next steps
Pair "Mears" vs "mere" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "Mears" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "mere" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #201,189 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "Mears" and "mere" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marl vs Mears". 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 #201,189 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.