made
/meːd/
"made" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“made” is in the everyday core of English, ranked #126 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #126
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A grub or maggot.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | made |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /meːd/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #126 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “made” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for made is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /meːd/. Corpus data places it at rank #126 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "A grub or maggot.".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for made, with forms such as "amde", "madde", and "maed". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ME", "MD", "may", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English mathe, from Old English maþu, maþa (“maggot, worm, grub”), from Proto-Germanic *maþô (“maggot”), from Proto-Indo-European *mot- (“worm, grub, caterpillar, moth”). Cognate with Scots mathe, maithe (“maggot”), Dutch made (“maggot”), German… The correct English form is made, spelled M-A-D-E.
Definition
- 1A grub or maggot.
Etymology
From Middle English mathe, from Old English maþu, maþa (“maggot, worm, grub”), from Proto-Germanic *maþô (“maggot”), from Proto-Indo-European *mot- (“worm, grub, caterpillar, moth”). Cognate with Scots mathe, maithe (“maggot”), Dutch made (“maggot”), German Made (“maggot”). More at maggot.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: amde,madde,maed,mdae,mmade
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of made - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “made”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-A-D-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /meːd/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “ME” - see the side-by-side comparison. made vs ME
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.