mothervsmouthedWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: mother is a noun, mouthed is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mother” is a noun and “mouthed” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#576
“mother” frequency rank
#25,850
“mouthed” frequency rank
26426
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mother mouthed
Definition A female parent, especially of a human; a female who parents a child (which she has given birth to, adopted, or fostered). Having a specified type of mouth.

Letter map: mother vs mouthed

Shared letters muted; letters that set mother and mouthed apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

6 ch
mother
7 ch
mouthed

Part-of-speech tell for mother / mouthed

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mother is anoun and mouthedanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26426, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mother is recorded at frequency rank #576, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmʌð.ə/. mouthed is at rank #25,850, tagged as anadj.

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 26426, this pair ranks #386,789 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mother vs mouthed

Shared letters: ehmot. Private to "mother": r. Private to "mouthed": du.

"mother" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "mouthed" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mothermmother · mohter · motehr · motherr · mothher · mothre · motther · mtoher
  • mouthedmmouthed · motuhed · mouhted · moutehd · mouthde · mouthedd · mouthhed · moutthed

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mother" for "mouthed" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mother" is a noun and "mouthed" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mother" or "mouthed"?
"mother" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #576 in our English list, against #25,850 for "mouthed". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "mother" and "mouthed". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mother" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mouthed" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #386,789 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mother" and "mouthed" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mottled vs mouthed". 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 #386,789 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