marquavsmarquéConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#29,434
“marqua” frequency rank
#2,046
“marqué” frequency rank
31480
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marqua marqué
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple de marquer. Qui frappe la vue, l’attention, qui se fait remarquer, apparent, visible.

Where the eye mixes marqua and marqué

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence.

6 ch
marqua
6 ch
marqué

Look-alike desk: marqua vs marqué

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: marqua is \maʁ.ka\ while marqué is \maʁ.ke\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - a in “marqua” becomes é in “marqué”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31480, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marqua is recorded at frequency rank #29,434, classified as averb, pronounced \maʁ.ka\. 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 31480, this pair ranks #303,538 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of marqua vs marqué

Shared letters: amqru. Private to "marqua": -. Private to "marqué": é.

"marqua" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "marqué" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marquaamrqua · maqrua · marqau · marqqua · marrqua · maruqa · mmarqua · mraqua

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "marqua" and "marqué" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marqua" is a verb and "marqué" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "marqua" or "marqué" show up more?
"marqué" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,046 in our French list, against #29,434 for "marqua". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marqua" 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 #303,538 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marqua" and "marqué" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "manqua vs marqua". 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 #303,538 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