mainevsmariéeConfusable pair

Quick tell: maine is a adjective, mariée is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“maine” is an adjective and “mariée” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,880
“maine” frequency rank
#4,162
“mariée” frequency rank
13042
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maine mariée
Definition Grand. Femme qui se marie ou qui s’est mariée le jour même.

Letter map: maine vs mariée

Shared letters muted; letters that set maine and mariée apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. maine runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against mariée's 6 (CVCVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
maine
6 ch
mariée

Part-of-speech tell for maine / mariée

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maine is anadjective and mariéeanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13042, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maine is recorded at frequency rank #8,880, classified as anadj. mariée is at rank #4,162, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.ʁje\.

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 13042, this pair ranks #402,684 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of maine vs mariée

Shared letters: aeim. Private to "maine": n. Private to "mariée": .

"maine" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "mariée" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mainemaien · mainne · miane · mmaine

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maine" for "mariée" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maine" is an adjective and "mariée" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "maine" or "mariée"?
"mariée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,162 in our French list, against #8,880 for "maine". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "maine" and "mariée".

  • Full dictionary entry for "maine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mariée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #402,684 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maine" and "mariée" 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 #402,684 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