mailsvsmaloConfusable pair

Which to use

“mails” and “malo” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#7,725
“mails” frequency rank
#12,191
“malo” frequency rank
19916
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mails malo
Definition Pluriel de mail. Langue océanienne parlée dans l’île de Malo, au Vanuatu.

Where the eye mixes mails and malo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
mails
4 ch
malo

Look-alike desk: mails vs malo

A purely visual mix-up. mails (\maj\) and malo (\ma.lo\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19916, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mails is recorded at frequency rank #7,725, classified as anoun, pronounced \maj\. malo is at rank #12,191, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.lo\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 19916, this pair ranks #370,878 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mails vs malo

Shared letters: alm. Private to "mails": is. Private to "malo": o.

"mails" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "malo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mailsamils · maills · mailss · maisl · malis · mials · mmails
  • maloamlo · mallo · maol · mlao · mmalo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mails" for "malo" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\maj\ versus \ma.lo\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "mails" vs "malo" - which ranks higher?
"mails" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,725 in our French list, against #12,191 for "malo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "mails" and "malo" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mails" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "malo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #370,878 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mails" and "malo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "malo vs mito". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #370,878 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list