meulevsmleWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#29,861
“meule” frequency rank
#43,557
“mle” frequency rank
73418
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meule mle
Definition Roue en pierre, en bois, qui sert à broyer en tournant. Abréviation de matricule.

Letter map: meule vs mle

Shared letters muted; letters that set meule and mle apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. meule runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against mle's 3 (CCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
meule
3 ch
mle

Corpus notes: meule and mle

meule and mle are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 73418, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meule is recorded at frequency rank #29,861, classified as anoun, pronounced \møl\. mle is at rank #43,557, tagged as anoun.

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 73418, this pair ranks #40,540 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of meule vs mle

Shared letters: elm. Private to "meule": u. Private to "mle": -.

"meule" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "mle" · 3 letters · shape CCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meule ← emule · melue · meuel · meulle · mmeule · muele

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "meule" and "mle" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary French text, does "meule" or "mle" show up more?
"meule" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,861 in our French list, against #43,557 for "mle". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "meule" vs "mle" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meule" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mle" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #40,540 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meule" and "mle" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mle vs MWh". 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 #40,540 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