marquéevsmasquerWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: marquée is a adjective, masquer is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#4,507
“marquée” frequency rank
#13,210
“masquer” frequency rank
17717
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marquée masquer
Definition Féminin singulier de marqué. Mettre un masque à quelqu’un.

Where the eye mixes marquée and masquer

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

7 ch
marquée
7 ch
masquer

Look-alike desk: marquée vs masquer

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: marquée is \maʁ.ke\ while masquer is \mas.ke\. 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 verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 17717, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marquée is recorded at frequency rank #4,507, classified as anadj, pronounced \maʁ.ke\. masquer is at rank #13,210, tagged as averb, pronounced \mas.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 17717, this pair ranks #381,813 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of marquée vs masquer

Shared letters: aemqru. Private to "marquée": é. Private to "masquer": s.

"marquée" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVV  ·  "masquer" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • masqueramsquer · maqsuer · masqeur · masqquer · masquerr · masqure · massquer · masuqer

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "marquée" and "masquer" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marquée" is an adjective and "masquer" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "marquée" vs "masquer" - which ranks higher?
"marquée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,507 in our French list, against #13,210 for "masquer". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "marquée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "masquer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #381,813 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marquée" and "masquer" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "masquent vs masquer". 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 #381,813 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