mau
\maʊ̯\
The verdict
“mau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #35,149) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #35,149
- frequency rank, French
- 5,038
- “M” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Mal en point, mal fichu, patraque.
Corpus desk
Index FR-mau · mau · French
mau · rank #35,149 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #35,149
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,038
- PHOTO-FINISH Mauro
Nearest frequency peer: Mauro (+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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « mau »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- Marivaux
Marivaux
64,856 corpus weight
- maroquinerie
maroquinerie
64,855 corpus weight
- mau
mau
64,852 corpus weight
- Mauro
Mauro
64,851 corpus weight
- menaçants
menaçants
64,849 corpus weight
- merlot
merlot
64,848 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « mau » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des 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 | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \maʊ̯\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #35,149 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « mau »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for mau is neighbouring look-alikes ("me", "mm", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \maʊ̯\. Frequency #35,149 among 5,038 “M” headwords. Gloss: "Mal en point, mal fichu, patraque.".
mau doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "me", "mm", "mi", 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 is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is mau, spelled M-A-U.
Definition
- 1Mal en point, mal fichu, patraque.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how mau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Leider sieht es auf unserem Konto etwas mau aus.
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 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "mau"?
What does "mau" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "mau"?
How do you pronounce "mau"?
What language does "mau" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "mau", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).