mazevsmixéWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“maze” and “mixé” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#40,371
“maze” frequency rank
#40,872
“mixé” frequency rank
81243
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maze mixé
Definition Première personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif de mazer. Participe passé masculin singulier de mixer.

Where the eye mixes maze and mixé

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence. maze and mixé follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
maze
4 ch
mixé

Look-alike desk: maze vs mixé

A purely visual mix-up. maze (\maz\) and mixé (\mik.se\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81243, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maze is recorded at frequency rank #40,371, classified as averb, pronounced \maz\. mixé is at rank #40,872, tagged as averb, pronounced \mik.se\.

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 81243, this pair ranks #19,177 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maze vs mixé

Shared letters: m. Private to "maze": aez. Private to "mixé": ixé.

"maze" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mixé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maze ← amze · maez · mazze · mmaze · mzae

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maze" for "mixé" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\maz\ versus \mik.se\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "maze" vs "mixé" - which ranks higher?
"maze" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40,371 in our French list, against #40,872 for "mixé". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "maze" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mixé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #19,177 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maze" and "mixé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mito vs mixé". 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 #19,177 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