marquesvsmasquéeWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: marques is a noun, masquée is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#2,838
“marques” frequency rank
#33,345
“masquée” frequency rank
36183
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marques masquée
Definition Pluriel de marque. Féminin singulier de masqué.

Where the eye mixes marques and masquée

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. marques (CVCCVVC) and masquée (CVCCVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
marques
7 ch
masquée

Visual trap between marques and masquée

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: marques is \maʁk\ while masquée 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36183, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marques is recorded at frequency rank #2,838, classified as anoun, pronounced \maʁk\. masquée is at rank #33,345, tagged as anadj, 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 36183, this pair ranks #271,431 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of marques vs masquée

Shared letters: aemqsu. Private to "marques": r. Private to "masquée": é.

"marques" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "masquée" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marques ← amrques · maqrues · marqeus · marqques · marquess · marquse · marrques · maruqes

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "marques" and "masquée" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marques" is a noun and "masquée" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "marques" or "masquée"?
"marques" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,838 in our French list, against #33,345 for "masquée". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "marques" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "masquée" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #271,431 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marques" and "masquée" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "masquée vs moquée". 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 #271,431 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