Mau
"mau" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“Mau” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #26,500 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #26,500
- frequency rank, English
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A kind of short-haired domestic cat.
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) |
Where “Mau” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for Mau is 3 letters long, classified as a noun. Corpus data places it at rank #26,500 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "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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Using “Mau”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is M-A-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “my” - see the side-by-side comparison. Mau vs my
- 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.