mailsvsmarsTell them apart

Which to use

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

#7,725
“mails” frequency rank
#426
“mars” frequency rank
8151
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mails mars
Definition Pluriel de mail. Troisième mois de l’année du calendrier grégorien, qui compte 31 jours.

Where the eye mixes mails and mars

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
mails
4 ch
mars

Why the eye confuses mails with mars

A purely visual mix-up. mails (\maj\) and mars (\maʁs\) 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 8151, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mails is recorded at frequency rank #7,725, classified as anoun, pronounced \maj\. mars is at rank #426, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʁs\.

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 8151, this pair ranks #420,958 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mails vs mars

Shared letters: ams. Private to "mails": il. Private to "mars": r.

"mails" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "mars" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mailsamils · maills · mailss · maisl · malis · mials · mmails
  • marsamrs · marrs · marss · masr · mmars · mras

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mails" for "mars" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\maj\ versus \maʁs\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "mails" vs "mars" - which ranks higher?
"mars" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #426 in our French list, against #7,725 for "mails". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mails" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mars" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #420,958 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mails" and "mars" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs mails". 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 #420,958 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