mauryvsmerryTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#27,521
“maury” frequency rank
#24,674
“merry” frequency rank
52195
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maury merry
Definition Vin doux naturel rouge d’appellation d’origine contrôlée produit autour de Maury, au nord-ouest de Perpignan dans les Pyrénées-Orientales. Gai, joyeux.

Where the eye mixes maury and merry

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
maury
5 ch
merry

Why the eye confuses maury with merry

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: maury is \mo.ʁi\ while merry is \ˈmɛɹ.i\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 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 52195, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maury is recorded at frequency rank #27,521, classified as anoun, pronounced \mo.ʁi\. merry is at rank #24,674, tagged as anadj, pronounced \ˈmɛɹ.i\.

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 52195, this pair ranks #149,421 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maury vs merry

Shared letters: mry. Private to "maury": au. Private to "merry": e.

"maury" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "merry" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mauryamury · maruy · maurry · mauryy · mauyr · mmaury · muary
  • merryemrry · merryy · mery · meryr · mmerry · mrery

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "maury" and "merry" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maury" is a noun and "merry" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "maury" or "merry"?
"merry" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,674 in our French list, against #27,521 for "maury". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "maury" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "merry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #149,421 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maury" and "merry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maury vs Méry". 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 #149,421 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