MadèrevsmodernTell them apart

Quick tell: Madère is a name, modern is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#30,257
“Madère” frequency rank
#21,694
“modern” frequency rank
51951
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Madère modern
Definition Île la plus importante de l’archipel madérien, située à 643 km au nord-ouest du Maroc et appartenant au Portugal. Moderne.

Where the eye mixes Madère and modern

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. Madère (CVCVCV) and modern (CVCVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
Madère
6 ch
modern

Look-alike desk: Madère vs modern

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Madère is \ma.dɛʁ\ while modern is \mɔ.ˈdern\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (name vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51951, 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\. modern is at rank #21,694, tagged as anadj, pronounced \mɔ.ˈdern\.

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 51951, this pair ranks #151,231 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Madère vs modern

Shared letters: demr. Private to "Madère": aè. Private to "modern": no.

"Madère" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "modern" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • modern ← mdoern · mmodern · moddern · modenr · modernn · moderrn · modren · moedrn

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Madère" for "modern" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Madère" is a name and "modern" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Madère" or "modern"?
"modern" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,694 in our French list, against #30,257 for "Madère". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "Madère" and "modern" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Madère" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "modern" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #151,231 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Madère" and "modern" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Maddie vs Madère". 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 #151,231 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