miau
[ˈmjaw]
The verdict
“miau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #39,339) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #39,339
- frequency rank, Spanish
- 36,142
- “M” headwords
- 4
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Imita el maullido (voz que emiten el gato y otros felinos pequeños).
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 | miau |
| Language | Spanish |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [ˈmjaw] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #39,339 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “miau” sits in Spanish frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for miau is neighbouring look-alikes ("mu", "mil", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced [ˈmjaw]. Frequency #39,339 among 36,142 “M” headwords. Gloss: "Imita el maullido (voz que emiten el gato y otros felinos pequeños).".
Our generated misspelling index lists 4 likely wrong-spelling variants for miau, with forms such as "imau", "maiu", and "miua". 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, "mu", "mil", "mío", 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, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct Spanish form is miau, spelled M-I-A-U.
Definition
- 1Imita el maullido (voz que emiten el gato y otros felinos pequeños).
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- imau
- maiu
- miua
- mmiau
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of miau - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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
How do you spell "miau"?
What does "miau" mean?
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Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “miau”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct Spanish spelling is M-I-A-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ˈmjaw] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “mu” - see the side-by-side comparison. miau vs mu
- Browse more Spanish words and confusable pairs in the same reference. Spanish words
Words at a similar Spanish frequency
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.