mesurevsmeurWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: mesure is a noun, meur is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“mesure” is a noun and “meur” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#520
“mesure” frequency rank
#43,010
“meur” frequency rank
43530
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mesure meur
Definition Dimension. Mûr.

Letter map: mesure vs meur

Shared letters muted; letters that set mesure and meur apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. mesure runs 6 letters (CVCVCV) against meur's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
mesure
4 ch
meur

Role in the sentence - mesure and meur

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mesure is anoun and meuranadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43530, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mesure is recorded at frequency rank #520, classified as anoun, pronounced \mə.zyʁ\. meur is at rank #43,010, tagged as anadj.

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 43530, this pair ranks #217,375 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mesure vs meur

Shared letters: emru. Private to "mesure": s. Private to "meur": -.

"mesure" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV  ·  "meur" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mesure ← emsure · mesrue · messure · mesuer · mesurre · meusre · mmesure · mseure
  • meur ← emur · meru · meurr · mmeur

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mesure" for "meur" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mesure" is a noun and "meur" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "mesure" or "meur"?
"mesure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #520 in our French list, against #43,010 for "meur". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "mesure" and "meur".

  • Full dictionary entry for "mesure" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #217,375 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mesure" and "meur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meur vs mud". 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 #217,375 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