mahévsmargeConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#44,035
“mahé” frequency rank
#3,410
“marge” frequency rank
47445
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mahé marge
Definition Dans, dedans. Lisière ; bord ; périphérie.

Where the eye mixes mahé and marge

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

4 ch
mahé
5 ch
marge

Visual trap between mahé and marge

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mahé is \ma.ˈhe\ while marge is \maʁʒ\. 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 47445, 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\. marge is at rank #3,410, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʁʒ\.

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 47445, this pair ranks #186,872 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mahé vs marge

Shared letters: am. Private to "mahé": hé. Private to "marge": egr.

"mahé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "marge" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marge ← amrge · magre · mareg · margge · marrge · mmarge · mrage

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "mahé" and "marge" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mahé" is a postp and "marge" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mahé" or "marge"?
"marge" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,410 in our French list, against #44,035 for "mahé". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "mahé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marge" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #186,872 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mahé" and "marge" 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 #186,872 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