maintevsmoineTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#45,723
“mainte” frequency rank
#8,428
“moine” frequency rank
54151
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mainte moine
Definition Féminin singulier de maint. Religieux faisant partie d’un ordre dont les membres vivent sous une règle commune et séparés du monde.

Where the eye mixes mainte and moine

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
mainte
5 ch
moine

Look-alike desk: mainte vs moine

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mainte is \mɛ̃t\ while moine is \mwan\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54151, 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\. moine is at rank #8,428, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mwan\.

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 54151, this pair ranks #135,925 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mainte vs moine

Shared letters: eimn. Private to "mainte": at. Private to "moine": o.

"mainte" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "moine" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mainteaminte · mainet · mainnte · maintte · maitne · manite · miante · mmainte
  • moinemione · mmoine · moien · moinne · monie · omine

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "mainte" and "moine" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mainte" is an adjective and "moine" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "mainte" vs "moine" - which ranks higher?
"moine" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,428 in our French list, against #45,723 for "mainte". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mainte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "moine" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #135,925 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mainte" and "moine" 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 #135,925 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