merdevsmoreTell them apart

Which to use

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

#481
“merde” frequency rank
#6,852
“more” frequency rank
7333
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature merde more
Definition Excrément de personne ou d’animal. Unité phonologique de durée ou de poids d’une syllabe dans certaines langues, typiquement une voyelle courte ayant une more et une voyelle longue deux mores.

Where the eye mixes merde and more

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

5 ch
merde
4 ch
more

Visual trap between merde and more

A purely visual mix-up. merde (\mɛʁd\) and more (\mɔʁ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7333, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

merde is recorded at frequency rank #481, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɛʁd\. more is at rank #6,852, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɔʁ\.

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 7333, this pair ranks #423,483 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of merde vs more

Shared letters: emr. Private to "merde": d. Private to "more": o.

"merde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "more" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • merdeemrde · medre · merdde · mered · merrde · mmerde · mrede
  • moremmore · moer · morre · mroe · omre

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "merde" for "more" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\mɛʁd\ versus \mɔʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "merde" or "more"?
"merde" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #481 in our French list, against #6,852 for "more". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "merde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "more" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #423,483 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "merde" and "more" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mordue vs more". 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 #423,483 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