marquévsmassueWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#2,046
“marqué” frequency rank
#28,248
“massue” frequency rank
30294
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marqué massue
Definition Qui frappe la vue, l’attention, qui se fait remarquer, apparent, visible. Sorte de bâton noueux, beaucoup plus gros par un bout que par l’autre, et dont on se servait comme d’arme offensive.

Where the eye mixes marqué and massue

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. marqué and massue follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
marqué
6 ch
massue

Visual trap between marqué and massue

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: marqué is \maʁ.ke\ while massue is \ma.sy\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30294, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marqué is recorded at frequency rank #2,046, classified as anadj, pronounced \maʁ.ke\. massue is at rank #28,248, tagged as anoun, pronounced \ma.sy\.

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 30294, this pair ranks #311,314 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of marqué vs massue

Shared letters: amu. Private to "marqué": qré. Private to "massue": es.

"marqué" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV  ·  "massue" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • massue ← amssue · masseu · masue · masuse · mmassue · msasue

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "marqué" for "massue" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marqué" is an adjective and "massue" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "marqué" vs "massue" - which ranks higher?
"marqué" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,046 in our French list, against #28,248 for "massue". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "marqué" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "massue" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #311,314 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marqué" and "massue" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Massoud vs massue". 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 #311,314 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