magnevsmarnesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“magne” and “marnes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#27,872
“magne” frequency rank
#41,401
“marnes” frequency rank
69273
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature magne marnes
Definition Manière, savoir-vivre. Pluriel de marne.

Where the eye mixes magne and marnes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. magne runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against marnes's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
magne
6 ch
marnes

Look-alike desk: magne vs marnes

A purely visual mix-up. magne (\maɲ\) and marnes (\maʁn\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69273, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

magne is recorded at frequency rank #27,872, classified as anoun, pronounced \maɲ\. marnes is at rank #41,401, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʁn\.

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 69273, this pair ranks #55,797 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of magne vs marnes

Shared letters: aemn. Private to "magne": g. Private to "marnes": rs.

"magne" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "marnes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • magne ← amgne · magen · maggne · magnne · mgane · mmagne
  • marnes ← amrnes · manres · marens · marness · marnnes · marnse · marrnes · mmarnes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "magne" for "marnes" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\maɲ\ versus \maʁn\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "magne" or "marnes"?
"magne" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,872 in our French list, against #41,401 for "marnes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "magne" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marnes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #55,797 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "magne" and "marnes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mane vs marnes". 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 #55,797 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