mau
[ˈmaw]
The verdict
“mau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #36,153) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #36,153
- frequency rank, Spanish
- 3,868
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Malo
Corpus desk
Index ES-mau · mau · Spanish
mau · rank #36,153 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #36,153
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,868
- PHOTO-FINISH Mathias
Nearest frequency peer: Mathias (-1 rank slots)
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.
Vecinos de frecuencia del confusable “mau”
Pares de peso similar en el corpus, aparte de los confusables abajo
- marquen
marquen
63,851 corpus weight
- matará
matará
63,850 corpus weight
- Mathias
Mathias
63,849 corpus weight
- mau
mau
63,848 corpus weight
- melvin
melvin
63,847 corpus weight
- menester
menester
63,846 corpus weight
What this shows Las barras sitúan “mau” frente a los lemas españoles más cercanos por rango, no un reprint del escritorio de confusables.
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 | Spanish |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | [ˈmaw] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #36,153 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rango de corpus junto a confusables de “mau”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for mau is neighbouring look-alikes ("mi", "mm", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced [ˈmaw]. Frequency #36,153 among 3,868 “M” headwords. Gloss: "Malo".
mau has no tracked misspelling variants, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "mi", "mm", "my", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling pattern is best understood through pronunciation rather than a traceable origin. The correct Spanish form is mau, spelled M-A-U.
Definition
- 1Malo
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 Spanish corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar Spanish words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "mau", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked Spanish headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).