Which to use
“marde” and “merde” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #36,043
- “marde” frequency rank
- #481
- “merde” frequency rank
- 36524
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | marde | merde |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Merde. | Excrément de personne ou d’animal. |
Where the eye mixes marde and merde
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. marde and merde follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: marde vs merde
A purely visual mix-up. marde (\maʁd\) and merde (\mɛʁd\) 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 - a in “marde” becomes e in “merde”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36524, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
marde is recorded at frequency rank #36,043, classified as anoun, pronounced \maʁd\. merde is at rank #481, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɛʁd\.
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 36524, this pair ranks #269,000 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of marde vs merde
Shared letters: demr. Private to "marde": a. Private to "merde": -.
"marde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "merde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "marde" and "merde" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "marde" or "merde" show up more?
After this comparison
Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.
- Full dictionary entry for "marde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "merde" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #269,000 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "marde" and "merde" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs marde". 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 #269,000 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.