male
/meɪl/
"male" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“male” has 5 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #1,371. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #1,371
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Belonging to the sex which typically produces sperm, or to the gender which is typically associated with it.
Corpus desk
Index EN-male · male · English
male · rank #1,371 · 5 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,371
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 5 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH laws
Nearest frequency peer: laws (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “male”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- holding
holding
98,633 corpus weight
- Japan
Japan
98,632 corpus weight
- laws
laws
98,631 corpus weight
- male
male
98,630 corpus weight
- Mrs
Mrs
98,629 corpus weight
- parties
parties
98,628 corpus weight
What this shows “male” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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 | male |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | /meɪl/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,371 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “male”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 5 spelling variants around male (IPA /meɪl/), anadjective. Corpus frequency is #1,371 among 4,057 “M” headwords. Wiktionary lists 6 senses, so context still picks the gloss.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for male, with forms such as "amle", "mael", and "malle". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ME", "ML", "may", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Latin mās Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -ulus Latin -culus Latin masculus Vulgar Latin masclus Old French maslebor. Middle English male English male From Middle English male, borrowed from Old French malle, masle (Modern… The correct English form is male, spelled M-A-L-E.
Definition
- 1Belonging to the sex which typically produces sperm, or to the gender which is typically associated with it.
- 2Characteristic of this sex/gender. (Compare masculine, manly.)
- 3Tending to lead to or regulate the development of sexual characteristics typical of this sex.
- 4Masculine; of the masculine grammatical gender.
- 5Having the F factor; able to impart DNA into another bacterium which does not have the F factor (a female).
- 6Of instruments, tools, or connectors: designed to fit into or penetrate a female counterpart, as in a connector, pipe fitting or laboratory glassware.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how male appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
male writers
the leading male and female singers
Etymology
Etymology tree Latin mās Proto-Indo-European *-lós Proto-Italic *-elos Latin -ulus Latin -culus Latin masculus Vulgar Latin masclus Old French maslebor. Middle English male English male From Middle English male, borrowed from Old French malle, masle (Modern French mâle), from Latin masculus (“masculine, a male”), diminutive of mās (“male, masculine”). Doublet of macho. Displaced native Old English wǣpned (“male”, literally “weaponed”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- amle
- mael
- malle
- mlae
- mmale
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of male - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
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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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "male", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (5 here; floor ≥5).