meldvsMervWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: meld is a verb, Merv is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“meld” is a verb and “Merv” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,795
“meld” frequency rank
#48,894
“Merv” frequency rank
89689
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meld Merv
Definition To combine (multiple things) together; to blend, to fuse. Synonym of Mary, a city in Turkmenistan noted for its former role on the Silk Road and similar trade routes.

Letter map: meld vs Merv

Shared letters muted; letters that set meld and Merv apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. meld and Merv follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
meld
4 ch
Merv

Part-of-speech tell for meld / Merv

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: meld is averb and Mervaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 89689, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meld is recorded at frequency rank #40,795, classified as averb, pronounced /mɛld/. Merv is at rank #48,894, tagged as aname.

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 89689, this pair ranks #4,912 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of meld vs Merv

Shared letters: em. Private to "meld": dl. Private to "Merv": rv.

"meld" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Merv" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meld ← emld · medl · meldd · melld · mled · mmeld
  • Merv ← emrv · merrv · mervv · mevr · mmerv · mrev

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "meld" for "Merv" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "meld" is a verb and "Merv" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "meld" or "Merv"?
"meld" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40,795 in our English list, against #48,894 for "Merv". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "meld" vs "Merv" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meld" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Merv" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,912 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meld" and "Merv" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mela vs Merv". 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 #4,912 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