melovsmeurTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#36,955
“melo” frequency rank
#43,010
“meur” frequency rank
79965
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature melo meur
Definition Blaireau. Mûr.

Letter map: melo vs meur

Shared letters muted; letters that set melo and meur apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. melo (CVCV) and meur (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
melo
4 ch
meur

Role in the sentence - melo and meur

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: melo is anoun and meuranadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 79965, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

melo is recorded at frequency rank #36,955, classified as anoun, pronounced \ˈme.lo\. meur is at rank #43,010, tagged as anadj.

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 79965, this pair ranks #22,041 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of melo vs meur

Shared letters: em. Private to "melo": lo. Private to "meur": ru.

"melo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "meur" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • melo ← emlo · mello · meol · mleo · mmelo
  • meur ← emur · meru · meurr · mmeur

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "melo" and "meur" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "melo" is a noun and "meur" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "melo" vs "meur" - which ranks higher?
"melo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,955 in our French list, against #43,010 for "meur". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "melo" and "meur".

  • Full dictionary entry for "melo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #22,041 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "melo" and "meur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meur vs mud". 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 #22,041 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