marevsmarquéWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#11,992
“mare” frequency rank
#2,046
“marqué” frequency rank
14038
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mare marqué
Definition Petit amas d’eau dormante qui se forme naturellement par l’abaissement du sol, ou qu’on produit artificiellement dans les villages et dans les fermes, pour des usages communs ou domestiques. Qui frappe la vue, l’attention, qui se fait remarquer, apparent, visible.

Where the eye mixes mare and marqué

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. mare runs 4 letters (CVCV) against marqué's 6 (CVCCVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
mare
6 ch
marqué

Visual trap between mare and marqué

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mare is \mɑʁ\ while marqué is \maʁ.ke\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 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 14038, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mare is recorded at frequency rank #11,992, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɑʁ\. marqué is at rank #2,046, 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 14038, this pair ranks #398,454 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of mare vs marqué

Shared letters: amr. Private to "mare": e. Private to "marqué": qué.

"mare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "marqué" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maremarre · mmare · mrae

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mare" for "marqué" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mare" is a noun and "marqué" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mare" or "marqué"?
"marqué" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,046 in our French list, against #11,992 for "mare". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "mare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marqué" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #398,454 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mare" and "marqué" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maid vs mare". 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 #398,454 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