meetvsmeltWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“meet” and “melt” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#544
“meet” frequency rank
#7,582
“melt” frequency rank
8126
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meet melt
Definition To make contact (with someone) while in proximity. To change (or to be changed) from a solid state to a liquid state, usually by a gradual heat.

Where the eye mixes meet and melt

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
meet
4 ch
melt

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. meet (/miːt/) and melt (/mɛlt/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - e in “meet” becomes l in “melt”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8126, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meet is recorded at frequency rank #544, classified as averb, pronounced /miːt/. melt is at rank #7,582, tagged as averb, pronounced /mɛlt/.

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 8126, this pair ranks #504,007 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of meet vs melt

Shared letters: emt. Private to "meet": -. Private to "melt": l.

"meet" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "melt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meetemet · meett · mete · mmeet
  • meltemlt · mellt · meltt · metl · mlet · mmelt

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "meet" and "melt" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/miːt/ versus /mɛlt/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "meet" or "melt"?
"meet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #544 in our English list, against #7,582 for "melt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list