meneurvsmenhirWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#14,509
“meneur” frequency rank
#48,042
“menhir” frequency rank
62551
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meneur menhir
Definition Celui qui mène. Bloc de pierre de forme allongée, dressé par les populations néolithiques, que l’on trouve en territoire celte, notamment en Bretagne et Grande-Bretagne.

Where the eye mixes meneur and menhir

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. meneur (CVCVVC) and menhir (CVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
meneur
6 ch
menhir

Visual trap between meneur and menhir

A purely visual mix-up. meneur (\mə.nœʁ\) and menhir (\me.niʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62551, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meneur is recorded at frequency rank #14,509, classified as anoun, pronounced \mə.nœʁ\. menhir is at rank #48,042, tagged as anoun, pronounced \me.niʁ\.

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 62551, this pair ranks #86,497 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of meneur vs menhir

Shared letters: emnr. Private to "meneur": u. Private to "menhir": hi.

"meneur" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "menhir" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meneuremneur · meenur · meneru · meneurr · menneur · menuer · mmeneur · mneeur
  • menhiremnhir · mehnir · menhhir · menhirr · menhri · menihr · mennhir · mmenhir

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "meneur" and "menhir" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (\mə.nœʁ\ versus \me.niʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "meneur" or "menhir"?
"meneur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,509 in our French list, against #48,042 for "menhir". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meneur" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "menhir" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #86,497 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meneur" and "menhir" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mendier vs menhir". 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 #86,497 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