meetvsmesConfusable pair

Quick tell: meet is a verb, mes is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“meet” is a verb and “mes” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#19,597
“meet” frequency rank
#139
“mes” frequency rank
19736
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meet mes
Definition Rencontrer. Pluriel de mon, ma. Qui sont à moi, dans le cas d’un seul possesseur et de plusieurs objets.

Where the eye mixes meet and mes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
meet
3 ch
mes

Look-alike desk: meet vs mes

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: meet is \ˈmit\ while mes is \mɛ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs determiner), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19736, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meet is recorded at frequency rank #19,597, classified as averb, pronounced \ˈmit\. mes is at rank #139, tagged as adet, pronounced \mɛ\.

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 19736, this pair ranks #371,822 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of meet vs mes

Shared letters: em. Private to "meet": t. Private to "mes": s.

"meet" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "mes" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meetmeett · mmeet

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "meet" for "mes" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "meet" is a verb and "mes" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "meet" or "mes" show up more?
"mes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #139 in our French list, against #19,597 for "meet". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "meet" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #371,822 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meet" and "mes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meet vs memo". 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 #371,822 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