maréevsMarioWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: marée is a noun, Mario is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“marée” is a noun and “Mario” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,269
“marée” frequency rank
#3,776
“Mario” frequency rank
12045
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marée Mario
Definition Mouvement d’ondulation de la surface de la mer, provoquant une baisse et une hausse de son niveau sur un rythme journalier ou semi-journalier selon les régions du globe. Nom de famille.

Where the eye mixes marée and Mario

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
marée
5 ch
Mario

Why the eye confuses marée with Mario

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: marée is \ma.ʁe\ while Mario is \ma.ʁjo\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12045, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marée is recorded at frequency rank #8,269, classified as anoun, pronounced \ma.ʁe\. Mario is at rank #3,776, tagged as aname, pronounced \ma.ʁjo\.

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 12045, this pair ranks #406,804 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of marée vs Mario

Shared letters: amr. Private to "marée": . Private to "Mario": io.

"marée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "Mario" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Marioamrio · mairo · maroi · marrio · mmario · mraio

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "marée" for "Mario" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marée" is a noun and "Mario" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "marée" or "Mario" show up more?
"Mario" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,776 in our French list, against #8,269 for "marée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "marée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Mario" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #406,804 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marée" and "Mario" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "majorée vs marée". 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 #406,804 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