melavsmeloWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#49,487
“mela” frequency rank
#21,860
“melo” frequency rank
71347
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mela melo
Definition A Hindu religious festival. Abbreviation of melodrama.

Letter map: mela vs melo

Shared letters muted; letters that set mela and melo apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. mela and melo follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
mela
4 ch
melo

Spelling & dictionary notes on mela vs melo

mela and melo 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 by a single letter - a in “mela” becomes o in “melo”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71347, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mela is recorded at frequency rank #49,487, classified as anoun. melo is at rank #21,860, 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 71347, this pair ranks #47,088 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mela vs melo

Shared letters: elm. Private to "mela": a. Private to "melo": o.

"mela" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "melo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mela ← emla · mella · mlea · mmela
  • melo ← emlo · meol · mleo · mmelo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mela" for "melo" ever safe?
No. They differ by a single letter - a in “mela” becomes o in “melo”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "mela" vs "melo" - which ranks higher?
"melo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,860 in our English list, against #49,487 for "mela". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "mela" and "melo". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mela" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "melo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #47,088 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mela" and "melo" 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 #47,088 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