mêléesvsmuséesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: mêlées is a adjective, musées is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#34,210
“mêlées” frequency rank
#5,369
“musées” frequency rank
39579
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mêlées musées
Definition Féminin pluriel de mêlé. Fête destinée à honorer les Muses, et ayant lieu à Thespies en Grèce.

Where the eye mixes mêlées and musées

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. mêlées and musées follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
mêlées
6 ch
musées

Visual trap between mêlées and musées

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mêlées is \mɛ.le\ while musées is \my.ze\. 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 (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39579, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mêlées is recorded at frequency rank #34,210, classified as anadj, pronounced \mɛ.le\. musées is at rank #5,369, tagged as anoun, pronounced \my.ze\.

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 39579, this pair ranks #246,924 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mêlées vs musées

Shared letters: emsé. Private to "mêlées": lê. Private to "musées": u.

"mêlées" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "musées" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mêlées" for "musées" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mêlées" is an adjective and "musées" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mêlées" or "musées"?
"musées" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,369 in our French list, against #34,210 for "mêlées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "mêlées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "musées" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #246,924 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mêlées" and "musées" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "malles vs mêlées". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #246,924 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