MédéevsmeuteTell them apart

Quick tell: Médée is a name, meute is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Médée” is a name and “meute” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#41,913
“Médée” frequency rank
#13,633
“meute” frequency rank
55546
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Médée meute
Definition Fille d’Éétès, roi de Colchide. Troupe de chiens courants dressés pour la vénerie ou chasse à courre.

Where the eye mixes Médée and meute

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. Médée (CVCVV) and meute (CVVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
Médée
5 ch
meute

Why the eye confuses Médée with meute

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Médée is \me.de\ while meute is \møt\. 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 (name vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55546, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Médée is recorded at frequency rank #41,913, classified as aname, pronounced \me.de\. meute is at rank #13,633, tagged as anoun, pronounced \møt\.

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 55546, this pair ranks #126,814 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Médée vs meute

Shared letters: em. Private to "Médée": dé. Private to "meute": tu.

"Médée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "meute" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meute ← emute · metue · meuet · meutte · mmeute · muete

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Médée" for "meute" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Médée" is a name and "meute" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Médée" or "meute" show up more?
"meute" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,633 in our French list, against #41,913 for "Médée". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Médée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meute" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #126,814 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Médée" and "meute" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Médée vs Meier". 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 #126,814 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