malevsmleWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#21,385
“male” frequency rank
#43,557
“mle” frequency rank
64942
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature male mle
Definition Féminin singulier de mal, dans le sens de mauvaise. Abréviation de matricule.

Letter map: male vs mle

Shared letters muted; letters that set male and mle apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. male runs 4 letters (CVCV) against mle's 3 (CCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
male
3 ch
mle

Part-of-speech tell for male / mle

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: male is anadjective and mleanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64942, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

male is recorded at frequency rank #21,385, classified as anadj, pronounced \mal\. mle is at rank #43,557, 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 64942, this pair ranks #74,621 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of male vs mle

Shared letters: elm. Private to "male": a. Private to "mle": -.

"male" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mle" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • male ← amle · mael · mlae · mmale

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "male" and "mle" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "male" is an adjective and "mle" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "male" or "mle"?
"male" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,385 in our French list, against #43,557 for "mle". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "male" vs "mle" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "male" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mle" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #74,621 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "male" and "mle" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mle vs MWh". 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 #74,621 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