MadèrevsmaîtreTell them apart

Quick tell: Madère is a name, maître is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Madère” is a name and “maître” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,257
“Madère” frequency rank
#946
“maître” frequency rank
31203
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Madère maître
Definition Île la plus importante de l’archipel madérien, située à 643 km au nord-ouest du Maroc et appartenant au Portugal. Personne qui exerce son autorité.

Where the eye mixes Madère and maître

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
Madère
6 ch
maître

Look-alike desk: Madère vs maître

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Madère is \ma.dɛʁ\ while maître is \mɛtʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31203, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Madère is recorded at frequency rank #30,257, classified as aname, pronounced \ma.dɛʁ\. maître is at rank #946, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɛtʁ\.

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 31203, this pair ranks #305,300 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Madère vs maître

Shared letters: aemr. Private to "Madère": . Private to "maître": .

"Madère" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "maître" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Madère" and "maître" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Madère" is a name and "maître" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Madère" vs "maître" - which ranks higher?
"maître" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #946 in our French list, against #30,257 for "Madère". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Madère" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "maître" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #305,300 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Madère" and "maître" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Maddie vs Madère". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #305,300 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