maplevsmileWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#23,931
“maple” frequency rank
#15,682
“mile” frequency rank
39613
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maple mile
Definition Érable. Unité de mesure de longueur anglo-saxonne, valant 1,760 yards (verges), soit 5,280 pieds, ou encore exactement 1 609,344 mètres. Son symbole est mi.

Where the eye mixes maple and mile

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

5 ch
maple
4 ch
mile

Why the eye confuses maple with mile

A purely visual mix-up. maple (\meɪ.pəl\) and mile (\majl\) 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 39613, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maple is recorded at frequency rank #23,931, classified as anoun, pronounced \meɪ.pəl\. mile is at rank #15,682, tagged as anoun, pronounced \majl\.

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 39613, this pair ranks #246,674 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maple vs mile

Shared letters: elm. Private to "maple": ap. Private to "mile": i.

"maple" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "mile" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maplemalpe · mapel · maplle · mapple · mmaple · mpale
  • mileimle · mlie · mmile

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maple" and "mile" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\meɪ.pəl\ versus \majl\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "maple" or "mile"?
"mile" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,682 in our French list, against #23,931 for "maple". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maple" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mile" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #246,674 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maple" and "mile" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Maël vs maple". 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 #246,674 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