melovsmolloConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#36,955
“melo” frequency rank
#33,351
“mollo” frequency rank
70306
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature melo mollo
Definition Blaireau. Doucement, sans hâte ou sans brusquerie.

Where the eye mixes melo and mollo

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

4 ch
melo
5 ch
mollo

Look-alike desk: melo vs mollo

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: melo is \ˈme.lo\ while mollo is \mɔ.lo\. 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 (noun vs adverb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70306, 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\. mollo is at rank #33,351, tagged as anadv, pronounced \mɔ.lo\.

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 70306, this pair ranks #51,824 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of melo vs mollo

Shared letters: lmo. Private to "melo": e. Private to "mollo": -.

"melo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "mollo" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meloemlo · mello · meol · mleo · mmelo
  • mollomlolo · mmollo · molo · molol · omllo

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "melo" and "mollo" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "melo" is a noun and "mollo" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "melo" or "mollo" show up more?
"mollo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,351 in our French list, against #36,955 for "melo". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "melo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mollo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #51,824 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "melo" and "mollo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "melo vs mito". 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 #51,824 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