manquevsmarquéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: manque is a noun, marquée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#584
“manque” frequency rank
#4,507
“marquée” frequency rank
5091
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature manque marquée
Definition Absence, défaut, fait de manquer. Féminin singulier de marqué.

Where the eye mixes manque and marquée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

6 ch
manque
7 ch
marquée

Why the eye confuses manque with marquée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: manque is \mɑ̃k\ while marquée is \maʁ.ke\. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5091, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

manque is recorded at frequency rank #584, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɑ̃k\. marquée is at rank #4,507, tagged as anadj, pronounced \maʁ.ke\.

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 5091, this pair ranks #429,922 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of manque vs marquée

Shared letters: aemqu. Private to "manque": n. Private to "marquée": .

"manque" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "marquée" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • manqueamnque · mannque · manqeu · manqque · manuqe · maqnue · mmanque · mnaque

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "manque" and "marquée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "manque" is a noun and "marquée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "manque" or "marquée"?
"manque" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #584 in our French list, against #4,507 for "marquée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "manque" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marquée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #429,922 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "manque" and "marquée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marquée vs moquée". 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 #429,922 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