makivsmamiWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#42,449
“maki” frequency rank
#45,158
“mami” frequency rank
87607
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maki mami
Definition Espèce de la famille des lémuridés vivant à Madagascar, à museau allongé, au pelage épais et laineux et à la queue longue et touffue. Nourrisson, petit enfant.

Where the eye mixes maki and mami

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. maki and mami follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
maki
4 ch
mami

Visual trap between maki and mami

A purely visual mix-up. maki (\ma.ki\) and mami (\ma.mi\) 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 a single letter - k in “maki” becomes m in “mami”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 87607, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maki is recorded at frequency rank #42,449, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.ki\. mami is at rank #45,158, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.mi\.

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 87607, this pair ranks #8,040 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maki vs mami

Shared letters: aim. Private to "maki": k. Private to "mami": -.

"maki" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mami" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maki ← amki · maik · makki · mkai · mmaki
  • mami ← ammi · mammi · mmai · mmami

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maki" and "mami" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\ma.ki\ versus \ma.mi\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "maki" or "mami"?
"maki" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,449 in our French list, against #45,158 for "mami". 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 "maki" and "mami" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maki" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mami" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #8,040 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maki" and "mami" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mami vs memo". 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 #8,040 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