Which to use
“merde” and “merdes” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #481
- “merde” frequency rank
- #10,359
- “merdes” frequency rank
- 10840
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | merde | merdes |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Excrément de personne ou d’animal. | Pluriel de merde. |
Same sound, different letters: merde vs merdes
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. merde runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against merdes's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Ear matches; page differs - merde and merdes
This is the hard kind. merde and merdes are pronounced identically (\mɛʁd\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “merde” sits inside “merdes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10840, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
merde is recorded at frequency rank #481, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɛʁd\. merdes is at rank #10,359, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɛʁd\.
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 10840, this pair ranks #411,475 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of merde vs merdes
Shared letters: demr. Private to "merde": -. Private to "merdes": s.
"merde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "merdes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "merde" for "merdes" ever safe?
Frequency check: "merde" vs "merdes" - which ranks higher?
What to do next
"merde" and "merdes" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.
- Full dictionary entry for "merde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "merdes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #411,475 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "merde" and "merdes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mercis vs merdes". 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 #411,475 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.