Which to use
“mâche” and “marde” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #29,456
- “mâche” frequency rank
- #36,043
- “marde” frequency rank
- 65499
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | mâche | marde |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Nom vulgaire de Valerianella locusta, plante potagère de la famille des Caprifoliaceae (caprifoliacées) que l'on mange en salade. | Merde. |
Where the eye mixes mâche and marde
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. mâche and marde follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between mâche and marde
A purely visual mix-up. mâche (\mɑʃ\) and marde (\maʁd\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 65499, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
mâche is recorded at frequency rank #29,456, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɑʃ\. marde is at rank #36,043, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʁd\.
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 65499, this pair ranks #72,069 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of mâche vs marde
Shared letters: em. Private to "mâche": châ. Private to "marde": adr.
"mâche" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "marde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- marde ← amrde · mardde · mared · marrde · mmarde · mrade
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "mâche" and "marde" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "mâche" or "marde" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "mâche" and "marde" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "mâche" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "marde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #72,069 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "mâche" and "marde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs marde". 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 #72,069 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.