makivsmarcTell them apart

Which to use

“maki” and “marc” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#42,449
“maki” frequency rank
#1,777
“marc” frequency rank
44226
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maki marc
Definition Espèce de la famille des lémuridés vivant à Madagascar, à museau allongé, au pelage épais et laineux et à la queue longue et touffue. Résidu des fruits dont on a extrait le suc.

Where the eye mixes maki and marc

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
maki
4 ch
marc

Look-alike desk: maki vs marc

A purely visual mix-up. maki (\ma.ki\) and marc (\maʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44226, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maki is recorded at frequency rank #42,449, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.ki\. marc is at rank #1,777, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʁ\.

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 44226, this pair ranks #212,090 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maki vs marc

Shared letters: am. Private to "maki": ik. Private to "marc": cr.

"maki" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "marc" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • makiamki · maik · makki · mkai · mmaki
  • marcamrc · macr · marcc · marrc · mmarc · mrac

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "maki" and "marc" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\ma.ki\ versus \maʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "maki" or "marc" show up more?
"marc" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,777 in our French list, against #42,449 for "maki". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "maki" and "marc" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maki" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marc" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #212,090 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maki" and "marc" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs maki". 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 #212,090 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