Which to use
“maine” is an adjective and “maître” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #8,880
- “maine” frequency rank
- #946
- “maître” frequency rank
- 9826
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | maine | maître |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Grand. | Personne qui exerce son autorité. |
Letter map: maine vs maître
Shared letters muted; letters that set maine and maître apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. maine runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against maître's 6 (CVVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for maine / maître
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maine is anadjective and maîtreanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9826, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
maine is recorded at frequency rank #8,880, classified as anadj. maître is at rank #946, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɛtʁ\.
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 9826, this pair ranks #415,255 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of maine vs maître
Shared letters: aem. Private to "maine": in. Private to "maître": rtî.
"maine" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV · "maître" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
- maine ← maien · mainne · miane · mmaine
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "maine" and "maître" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "maine" vs "maître" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pair "maine" vs "maître" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "maine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "maître" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #415,255 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "maine" and "maître" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs maine". 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 #415,255 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.