Which to use
“mine” is a pronoun and “mines” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #971
- “mine” frequency rank
- #5,340
- “mines” frequency rank
- 6311
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | mine | mines |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | That or those belonging to me. | plural of mine |
Where the eye mixes mine and mines
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mine is /maɪ̯n/ while mines is /maɪnz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “mine” sits inside “mines”, and the parts of speech differ too (pronoun vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6311, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
mine is recorded at frequency rank #971, classified as apron, pronounced /maɪ̯n/. mines is at rank #5,340, tagged as anoun, pronounced /maɪnz/.
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 6311, this pair ranks #511,927 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of mine vs mines
Shared letters: eimn. Private to "mine": -. Private to "mines": s.
"mine" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "mines" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC