maigrivsmalgréWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: maigri is a verb, malgré is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maigri” is a verb and “malgré” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,540
“maigri” frequency rank
#556
“malgré” frequency rank
44096
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maigri malgré
Definition Participe passé masculin singulier de maigrir. Contre le vouloir de quelqu’un, contre le gré de.

Where the eye mixes maigri and malgré

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. maigri (CVVCCV) and malgré (CVCCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
maigri
6 ch
malgré

Visual trap between maigri and malgré

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: maigri is \me.ɡʁi\ while malgré is \mal.ɡʁe\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs preposition), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44096, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maigri is recorded at frequency rank #43,540, classified as averb, pronounced \me.ɡʁi\. malgré is at rank #556, tagged as aprep, pronounced \mal.ɡʁe\.

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 44096, this pair ranks #213,080 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maigri vs malgré

Shared letters: agmr. Private to "maigri": i. Private to "malgré": lé.

"maigri" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "malgré" · 6 letters · shape CVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maigri ← amigri · magiri · maiggri · maigir · mairgi · miagri · mmaigri

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "maigri" and "malgré" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maigri" is a verb and "malgré" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "maigri" vs "malgré" - which ranks higher?
"malgré" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #556 in our French list, against #43,540 for "maigri". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "maigri" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "malgré" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #213,080 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maigri" and "malgré" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maigret vs maigri". 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 #213,080 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