“mother” in braille

How to recognise it

Six letters in two cells, sharing its second cell with “many” — the same m, told apart by the prefix. Inside a longer word it is allowed at the start and end but not the middle, which is measured rather than decreed.

The second cell is the letter m

The second cell is the word's own first letter — the simpler half of this list. The other nine use a groupsign instead.

Learn it with its sister

“mother” and “many” are written with the same second cell. Only the prefix separates them, which means the hard work of telling them apart is done by one cell — and learning them as a set is far quicker than meeting them one at a time.

Where it may appear inside a longer word

Anywhere of a word. UEB allows these inside a longer word only where the letters keep their meaning, which spelling cannot decide, so this site settled it by counting: every English word containing “mother”, checked against the reference, split by where the letters sat.

You will meet it as a word, not a fragment

The rule allows it inside a longer word, but none of the 5,000 commonest English words actually takes it there. Some on this list earn most of their keep buried in longer words — “part” turns up in nineteen of them — but this is not one of those. What it does have is the word itself: ranked 1404th in English, you will meet “mother” standing on its own often enough to want the two cells rather than the 6 letters spelled out.

The other 21 words under dots 5

The largest of the three prefix groups, so the prefix itself tells you little — the second cell does the work.

character, day, ever, father, here, know, lord, name, one, ought, part, question, right, some, there, through, time, under, where, work, young.

Check your own text

Type “mother” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.