meekvsmeekerWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: meek is a adjective, meeker is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“meek” is an adjective and “meeker” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#19,136
“meek” frequency rank
#46,615
“meeker” frequency rank
65751
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meek meeker
Definition Humble, non-boastful, modest, meager, or self-effacing. To break up and smooth soil with a harrow.

Letter map: meek vs meeker

Shared letters muted; letters that set meek and meeker apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. meek runs 4 letters (CVVC) against meeker's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
meek
6 ch
meeker

Part-of-speech tell for meek / meeker

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: meek is anadjective and meekeraverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “meek” sits inside “meeker”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65751, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meek is recorded at frequency rank #19,136, classified as anadj, pronounced /miːk/. meeker is at rank #46,615, tagged as averb.

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 65751, this pair ranks #71,282 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of meek vs meeker

Shared letters: ekm. Private to "meek": -. Private to "meeker": r.

"meek" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "meeker" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meek ← emek · meekk · meke · mmeek
  • meeker ← emeker · meeekr · meekerr · meekker · meekre · mekeer · meker · mmeeker

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "meek" and "meeker" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "meek" is an adjective and "meeker" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "meek" vs "meeker" - which ranks higher?
"meek" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #19,136 in our English list, against #46,615 for "meeker". 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 "meek" and "meeker". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meek" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meeker" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #71,282 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meek" and "meeker" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meeker vs Meijer". 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 #71,282 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