Which to use
“mainte” is an adjective and “maistre” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #45,723
- “mainte” frequency rank
- #32,062
- “maistre” frequency rank
- 77785
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | mainte | maistre |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Féminin singulier de maint. | Maître. |
Letter map: mainte vs maistre
Shared letters muted; letters that set mainte and maistre apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. mainte runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against maistre's 7 (CVVCCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for mainte / maistre
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mainte is anadjective and maistreanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77785, 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\. maistre is at rank #32,062, tagged as anoun.
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 77785, this pair ranks #27,476 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of mainte vs maistre
Shared letters: aeimt. Private to "mainte": n. Private to "maistre": rs.
"mainte" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV · "maistre" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "mainte" for "maistre" ever safe?
In ordinary French text, does "mainte" or "maistre" show up more?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mainte" and "maistre".
- Full dictionary entry for "mainte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "maistre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #27,476 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "mainte" and "maistre" 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 #27,476 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.