Mau
"mau" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Mau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #26,500) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #26,500
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A kind of short-haired domestic cat.
Corpus desk
Index EN-mau · Mau · English
Mau · rank #26,500 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #26,500
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH Mariana
Nearest frequency peer: Mariana (-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.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “Mau”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- longed
longed
73,505 corpus weight
- Loyola
Loyola
73,504 corpus weight
- Mariana
Mariana
73,502 corpus weight
- Mau
Mau
73,501 corpus weight
- McMaster
McMaster
73,498 corpus weight
- mimicking
mimicking
73,497 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “Mau” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | Mau |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #26,500 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “Mau”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for Mau is neighbouring look-alikes ("my", "ME", …), not just typos; it is anoun. Frequency #26,500 among 4,057 “M” headwords. Gloss: "A kind of short-haired domestic cat.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for Mau, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "my", "ME", "Mr", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From mȧu, the rendering of Egyptian mjw (“cat”) in Karl Richard Lepsius’s 19th-century transcription system. The correct English form is Mau, spelled M-A-U.
Definition
- 1A kind of short-haired domestic cat.
Etymology
From mȧu, the rendering of Egyptian mjw (“cat”) in Karl Richard Lepsius’s 19th-century transcription system.
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 "Mau", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).