melovsmleConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#36,955
“melo” frequency rank
#43,557
“mle” frequency rank
80512
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature melo mle
Definition Blaireau. Abréviation de matricule.

Letter map: melo vs mle

Shared letters muted; letters that set melo and mle apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. melo runs 4 letters (CVCV) against mle's 3 (CCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
melo
3 ch
mle

Pair insight - melo / mle

melo and mle are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80512, 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\. mle is at rank #43,557, tagged as anoun.

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 80512, this pair ranks #20,743 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of melo vs mle

Shared letters: elm. Private to "melo": o. Private to "mle": -.

"melo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mle" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • melo ← emlo · mello · meol · mleo · mmelo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "melo" for "mle" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "melo" vs "mle" - which ranks higher?
"melo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #36,955 in our French list, against #43,557 for "mle". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "melo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mle" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #20,743 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "melo" and "mle" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mle vs MWh". 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 #20,743 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