Which to use
“malice” and “maline” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #21,998
- “malice” frequency rank
- #46,280
- “maline” frequency rank
- 68278
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | malice | maline |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Inclination à nuire, à mal faire, à causer de la peine. | Grandes marées qui ont lieu à la nouvelle et à la pleine lune, et dont les plus considérables arrivent aux équinoxes. On l’emploie surtout au pluriel. |
Where the eye mixes malice and maline
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. malice and maline follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: malice vs maline
A purely visual mix-up. malice (\ma.lis\) and maline (\ma.lin\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - c in “malice” becomes n in “maline”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68278, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
malice is recorded at frequency rank #21,998, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.lis\. maline is at rank #46,280, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.lin\.
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 68278, this pair ranks #59,801 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of malice vs maline
Shared letters: aeilm. Private to "malice": c. Private to "maline": n.
"malice" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV · "maline" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "malice" and "maline" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "malice" or "maline" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "malice" and "maline" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "malice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "maline" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #59,801 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "malice" and "maline" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maline vs marlin". 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 #59,801 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.