marquagevsmarquiseWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#16,943
“marquage” frequency rank
#16,412
“marquise” frequency rank
33355
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marquage marquise
Definition Fait de marquer, ou résultat de cette action. Épouse ou veuve d’un marquis.

Where the eye mixes marquage and marquise

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. marquage and marquise follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

8 ch
marquage
8 ch
marquise

Why the eye confuses marquage with marquise

A purely visual mix-up. marquage (\maʁ.kaʒ\) and marquise (\maʁ.kiz\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33355, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marquage is recorded at frequency rank #16,943, classified as anoun, pronounced \maʁ.kaʒ\. marquise is at rank #16,412, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʁ.kiz\.

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 33355, this pair ranks #291,191 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of marquage vs marquise

Shared letters: aemqru. Private to "marquage": g. Private to "marquise": is.

"marquage" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVVCV  ·  "marquise" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marquage ← amrquage · maqruage · marqauge · marqquage · marquaeg · marquagge · marqugae · marrquage
  • marquise ← amrquise · maqruise · marqiuse · marqquise · marquies · marquisse · marqusie · marrquise

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "marquage" for "marquise" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\maʁ.kaʒ\ versus \maʁ.kiz\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "marquage" or "marquise"?
"marquise" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,412 in our French list, against #16,943 for "marquage". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marquage" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marquise" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #291,191 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marquage" and "marquise" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marquise vs marquises". 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 #291,191 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