meneusevsmineureWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#48,040
“meneuse” frequency rank
#10,196
“mineure” frequency rank
58236
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meneuse mineure
Definition Celle qui mène. Celle qui n’a pas atteint l’âge légal de la majorité dans son pays.

Where the eye mixes meneuse and mineure

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. meneuse and mineure follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
meneuse
7 ch
mineure

Why the eye confuses meneuse with mineure

A purely visual mix-up. meneuse (\mə.nøz\) and mineure (\mi.nœʁ\) 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 58236, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meneuse is recorded at frequency rank #48,040, classified as anoun, pronounced \mə.nøz\. mineure is at rank #10,196, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mi.nœʁ\.

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 58236, this pair ranks #110,218 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of meneuse vs mineure

Shared letters: emnu. Private to "meneuse": s. Private to "mineure": ir.

"meneuse" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCV  ·  "mineure" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meneuse ← emneuse · meenuse · menesue · meneues · meneusse · menneuse · menuese · mmeneuse
  • mineure ← imneure · mienure · minerue · mineuer · mineurre · minneure · minuere · mmineure

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "meneuse" for "mineure" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\mə.nøz\ versus \mi.nœʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary French text, does "meneuse" or "mineure" show up more?
"mineure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,196 in our French list, against #48,040 for "meneuse". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "meneuse" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mineure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #110,218 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meneuse" and "mineure" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "méduse vs meneuse". 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 #110,218 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