martelévsmartelerTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#37,914
“martelé” frequency rank
#45,165
“marteler” frequency rank
83079
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature martelé marteler
Definition Qualifie une médaille dont on a effacé le revers, qui était commun, pour frapper à la place un revers plus rare Battre à coups de marteau.

Same sound, different letters: martelé vs marteler

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. martelé runs 7 letters (CVCCVCV) against marteler's 8 (CVCCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
martelé
8 ch
marteler

Ear matches; page differs - martelé and marteler

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: martelé and marteler carry the same recorded pronunciation, \maʁ.tə.le\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 83079, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

martelé is recorded at frequency rank #37,914, classified as anadj, pronounced \maʁ.tə.le\. marteler is at rank #45,165, tagged as averb, pronounced \maʁ.tə.le\.

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 83079, this pair ranks #15,494 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of martelé vs marteler

Shared letters: aelmrt. Private to "martelé": é. Private to "marteler": -.

"martelé" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "marteler" · 8 letters · shape CVCCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marteler ← amrteler · maretler · marrteler · marteelr · martelerr · marteller · martelre · martleer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "martelé" and "marteler" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "martelé" is an adjective and "marteler" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "martelé" or "marteler" show up more?
"martelé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,914 in our French list, against #45,165 for "marteler". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "martelé" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "marteler" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #15,494 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "martelé" and "marteler" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "martelé vs Martens". 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 #15,494 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