Which to use
“maladie” and “malaria” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,117
- “maladie” frequency rank
- #30,695
- “malaria” frequency rank
- 31812
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | maladie | malaria |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Problème de santé chez un être vivant qui se traduit par une baisse des capacités physiques ou par un dysfonctionnement, une altération du métabolisme. | Air vicié, pestilence provenant des marécages, qu’on croyait être cause des accès de fièvre dont souffraient périodiquement les habitants de certaines régions. |
Where the eye mixes maladie and malaria
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. maladie and malaria follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: maladie vs malaria
A purely visual mix-up. maladie (\ma.la.di\) and malaria (\ma.la.ʁja\) 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 31812, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
maladie is recorded at frequency rank #1,117, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.la.di\. malaria is at rank #30,695, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.la.ʁja\.
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 31812, this pair ranks #301,394 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of maladie vs malaria
Shared letters: ailm. Private to "maladie": de. Private to "malaria": r.
"maladie" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV · "malaria" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "maladie" for "malaria" ever safe?
Which is more common, "maladie" or "malaria"?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "maladie" and "malaria" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "maladie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "malaria" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #301,394 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "maladie" and "malaria" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "malaria vs Malaysia". 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 #301,394 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.