maidvsmoisWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#49,778
“maid” frequency rank
#184
“mois” frequency rank
49962
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maid mois
Definition Servant·e, bonne, soubrette, généralement une femme. Chacune des douze parties de l’année, dont chacune contient trente ou trente et un jours, excepté la seconde (février), qui est de vingt-huit jours dans les années ordinaires, et de vingt-neuf dans les années bissextiles.

Where the eye mixes maid and mois

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
maid
4 ch
mois

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. maid (\med\) and mois (\mwa\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49962, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maid is recorded at frequency rank #49,778, classified as anoun, pronounced \med\. mois is at rank #184, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mwa\.

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 49962, this pair ranks #166,454 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maid vs mois

Shared letters: im. Private to "maid": ad. Private to "mois": os.

"maid" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "mois" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maidamid · madi · maidd · miad · mmaid
  • moismios · mmois · moiss · mosi

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "maid" and "mois" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\med\ versus \mwa\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "maid" or "mois"?
"mois" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #184 in our French list, against #49,778 for "maid". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "maid" and "mois". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maid" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mois" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #166,454 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maid" and "mois" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs mud". 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list