metvsmeuWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: met is a verb, meu is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“met” is a verb and “meu” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#853
“met” frequency rank
#48,897
“meu” frequency rank
49750
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature met meu
Definition simple past and past participle of meet Meum athamanticum, a European herb.

Where the eye mixes met and meu

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch
met
3 ch
meu

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: met is /mɛt/ while meu is /ˈmjuː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - t in “met” becomes u in “meu”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49750, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

met is recorded at frequency rank #853, classified as averb, pronounced /mɛt/. meu is at rank #48,897, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmjuː/.

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 49750, this pair ranks #180,676 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of met vs meu

Shared letters: em. Private to "met": t. Private to "meu": u.

"met" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "meu" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "met" and "meu" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "met" is a verb and "meu" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "met" or "meu"?
"met" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #853 in our English list, against #48,897 for "meu". 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