MèrevsMéryTell them apart

Quick tell: Mère is a noun, Méry is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Mère” is a noun and “Méry” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#292
“Mère” frequency rank
#48,675
“Méry” frequency rank
48967
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Mère Méry
Definition Nom donné à la Vierge Marie. Commune française, située dans le département de la Savoie.

Letter map: Mère vs Méry

Shared letters muted; letters that set Mère and Méry apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. Mère and Méry follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
Mère
4 ch
Méry

Role in the sentence - Mère and Méry

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Mère is anoun and Méryaname. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48967, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Mère is recorded at frequency rank #292, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɛʁ\. Méry is at rank #48,675, tagged as aname.

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 48967, this pair ranks #174,587 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Mère vs Méry

Shared letters: mr. Private to "Mère": eè. Private to "Méry": yé.

"Mère" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "Méry" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Mère" and "Méry" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Mère" is a noun and "Méry" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Mère" or "Méry" show up more?
"Mère" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #292 in our French list, against #48,675 for "Méry". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "Mère" and "Méry". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Mère" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Méry" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #174,587 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Mère" and "Méry" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "memo vs Méry". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #174,587 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