Which to use
“mainte” and “maintes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #45,723
- “mainte” frequency rank
- #10,028
- “maintes” frequency rank
- 55751
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | mainte | maintes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Féminin singulier de maint. | Féminin pluriel de maint. |
Same sound, different letters: mainte vs maintes
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. mainte runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against maintes's 7 (CVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - mainte and maintes
This is the hard kind. mainte and maintes are pronounced identically (\mɛ̃t\) and both work as anadjective. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “mainte” sits inside “maintes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55751, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
mainte is recorded at frequency rank #45,723, classified as anadj, pronounced \mɛ̃t\. maintes is at rank #10,028, tagged as anadj, pronounced \mɛ̃t\.
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 55751, this pair ranks #125,453 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of mainte vs maintes
Shared letters: aeimnt. Private to "mainte": -. Private to "maintes": s.
"mainte" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV · "maintes" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "mainte" for "maintes" ever safe?
Frequency check: "mainte" vs "maintes" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.
- Full dictionary entry for "mainte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "maintes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #125,453 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "mainte" and "maintes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mainte vs mane". 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 #125,453 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.