meu
/ˈmjuː/
"meu" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“meu” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #48,897) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #48,897
- frequency rank, English
- 4,057
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Meum athamanticum, a European herb.
Corpus desk
Index EN-meu · meu · English
meu · rank #48,897 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #48,897
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,057
- PHOTO-FINISH metastases
Nearest frequency peer: metastases (-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 “meu”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- Merv
Merv
51,107 corpus weight
- metalcore
metalcore
51,106 corpus weight
- metastases
metastases
51,105 corpus weight
- meu
meu
51,104 corpus weight
- militarizat…
militarization
51,103 corpus weight
- minimization
minimization
51,102 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “meu” 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 | meu |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈmjuː/ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #48,897 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “meu”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for meu is neighbouring look-alikes ("my", "Mr", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced /ˈmjuː/. Frequency #48,897 among 4,057 “M” headwords. Gloss: "Meum athamanticum, a European herb.".
Zero misspellings are on record for meu in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "my", "Mr", "MS", 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 Latin mēum (“umbelliferous plant, Meum athamanticum”), from Ancient Greek μῆον (mêon), probably from μεῖον (meîon, “lesser”) for its small size. The English form came perhaps via Middle French meu, a word with a single isolated attestation from the 14t… The correct English form is meu, spelled M-E-U.
Definition
- 1Meum athamanticum, a European herb.
Etymology
From Latin mēum (“umbelliferous plant, Meum athamanticum”), from Ancient Greek μῆον (mêon), probably from μεῖον (meîon, “lesser”) for its small size. The English form came perhaps via Middle French meu, a word with a single isolated attestation from the 14th century which only began to appear consistently from 1568, by which time the word was established in English.
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 "meu", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).