deirvsdemyWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: deir is a adjective, demy is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“deir” is an adjective and “demy” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#38,242
“deir” frequency rank
#40,209
“demy” frequency rank
78451
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature deir demy
Definition Forme mutée de teir par adoucissement (t → d). Récipiendaire d'une bourse d'études au Magdalen College de l'université d'Oxford.

Letter map: deir vs demy

Shared letters muted; letters that set deir and demy apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. deir (CVVC) and demy (CVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
deir
4 ch
demy

Part-of-speech tell for deir / demy

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: deir is anadjective and demyanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78451, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

deir is recorded at frequency rank #38,242, classified as anadj, pronounced \dɛjr\. demy is at rank #40,209, tagged as anoun.

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 78451, this pair ranks #25,715 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of deir vs demy

Shared letters: de. Private to "deir": ir. Private to "demy": my.

"deir" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "demy" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • deir ← ddeir · deirr · deri · edir
  • demy ← ddemy · demmy · demyy · deym · dmey · edmy

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "deir" for "demy" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "deir" is an adjective and "demy" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "deir" or "demy" show up more?
"deir" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,242 in our French list, against #40,209 for "demy". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "deir" and "demy".

  • Full dictionary entry for "deir" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "demy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,715 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "deir" and "demy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "demy vs dray". 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 #25,715 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