mahévsmakesTell them apart

Quick tell: mahé is a postp, makes is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mahé” is a postp and “makes” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#44,035
“mahé” frequency rank
#41,884
“makes” frequency rank
85919
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mahé makes
Definition Dans, dedans. Pluriel de make.

Where the eye mixes mahé and makes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. mahé runs 4 letters (CVCV) against makes's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
mahé
5 ch
makes

Visual trap between mahé and makes

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mahé is \ma.ˈhe\ while makes is \ˈmeɪks\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (postp vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 85919, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mahé is recorded at frequency rank #44,035, classified as apostp, pronounced \ma.ˈhe\. makes is at rank #41,884, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ˈmeɪks\.

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 85919, this pair ranks #10,540 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mahé vs makes

Shared letters: am. Private to "mahé": hé. Private to "makes": eks.

"mahé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "makes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • makes ← amkes · maeks · makess · makkes · makse · mkaes · mmakes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mahé" and "makes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mahé" is a postp and "makes" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "mahé" or "makes" show up more?
"makes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #41,884 in our French list, against #44,035 for "mahé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "mahé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "makes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #10,540 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mahé" and "makes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mahé vs MWh". 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 #10,540 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