marécagevsmarécagesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“marécage” and “marécages” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#39,395
“marécage” frequency rank
#32,479
“marécages” frequency rank
71874
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marécage marécages
Definition Étendue de terre saturée d'eau pendant la plus grande partie de l'année, et dont la surface du sol n'est généralement recouverte que d'une faible profondeur d'eau. Pluriel de marécage.

Same sound, different letters: marécage vs marécages

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 8 letters. marécage runs 8 letters (CVCVCVCV) against marécages's 9 (CVCVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
marécage
9 ch
marécages

Ear matches; page differs - marécage and marécages

This is the hard kind. marécage and marécages are pronounced identically (\ma.ʁe.kaʒ\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “marécage” sits inside “marécages”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71874, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marécage is recorded at frequency rank #39,395, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.ʁe.kaʒ\. marécages is at rank #32,479, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.ʁe.kaʒ\.

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 71874, this pair ranks #45,977 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of marécage vs marécages

Shared letters: acegmré. Private to "marécage": -. Private to "marécages": s.

"marécage" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVCV  ·  "marécages" · 9 letters · shape CVCVCVCVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "marécage" and "marécages" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ma.ʁe.kaʒ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "marécage" or "marécages" show up more?
"marécages" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,479 in our French list, against #39,395 for "marécage". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marécage" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marécages" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #45,977 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marécage" and "marécages" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marécage vs marécageux". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #45,977 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