manquéevsmanquerWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: manquée is a adjective, manquer is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“manquée” is an adjective and “manquer” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#22,932
“manquée” frequency rank
#3,206
“manquer” frequency rank
26138
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature manquée manquer
Definition Féminin singulier de manqué. Faillir ; tomber en faute.

Same sound, different letters: manquée vs manquer

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters.

7 ch
manquée
7 ch
manquer

Homophone desk: manquée vs manquer

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: manquée and manquer carry the same recorded pronunciation, \mɑ̃.ke\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26138, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

manquée is recorded at frequency rank #22,932, classified as anadj, pronounced \mɑ̃.ke\. manquer is at rank #3,206, tagged as averb, pronounced \mɑ̃.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 26138, this pair ranks #336,898 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of manquée vs manquer

Shared letters: aemnqu. Private to "manquée": é. Private to "manquer": r.

"manquée" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVV  ·  "manquer" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • manqueramnquer · mannquer · manqeur · manqquer · manquerr · manqure · manuqer · maqnuer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "manquée" for "manquer" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "manquée" is an adjective and "manquer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "manquée" or "manquer"?
"manquer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,206 in our French list, against #22,932 for "manquée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

"manquée" and "manquer" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "manquée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "manquer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #336,898 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "manquée" and "manquer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "manquée 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 #336,898 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