maçonvsMcCoyTell them apart

Quick tell: maçon is a adjective, McCoy is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maçon” is an adjective and “McCoy” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,438
“maçon” frequency rank
#30,702
“McCoy” frequency rank
46140
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maçon McCoy
Definition Qui appartient au métier des maçons ou leur est comparable. Nom de famille.

Letter map: maçon vs McCoy

Shared letters muted; letters that set maçon and McCoy apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. maçon (CVCVC) and McCoy (CCCVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
maçon
5 ch
McCoy

Part-of-speech tell for maçon / McCoy

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maçon is anadjective and McCoyaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46140, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maçon is recorded at frequency rank #15,438, classified as anadj, pronounced \ma.sɔ̃\. McCoy is at rank #30,702, tagged as aname.

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 46140, this pair ranks #197,296 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maçon vs McCoy

Shared letters: mo. Private to "maçon": anç. Private to "McCoy": cy.

"maçon" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "McCoy" · 5 letters · shape CCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • McCoy ← cmcoy · mccoyy · mccyo · mcocy · mcoy · mmccoy

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "maçon" and "McCoy" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maçon" is an adjective and "McCoy" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "maçon" or "McCoy"?
"maçon" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,438 in our French list, against #30,702 for "McCoy". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "maçon" vs "McCoy" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maçon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "McCoy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #197,296 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maçon" and "McCoy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maçon vs macros". 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 #197,296 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