meurvsmoteurTell them apart

Which to use

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

#43,010
“meur” frequency rank
#1,705
“moteur” frequency rank
44715
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meur moteur
Definition Mûr. Qui donne le mouvement ; qui anime.

Letter map: meur vs moteur

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

4 ch
meur
6 ch
moteur

Pair insight - meur / moteur

meur and moteur 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 44715, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meur is recorded at frequency rank #43,010, classified as anadj. moteur is at rank #1,705, tagged as anadj, pronounced \mɔ.tœʁ\.

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 44715, this pair ranks #208,354 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of meur vs moteur

Shared letters: emru. Private to "meur": -. Private to "moteur": ot.

"meur" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "moteur" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meur ← emur · meru · meurr · mmeur
  • moteur ← mmoteur · moetur · moteru · moteurr · motteur · motuer · mtoeur · omteur

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "meur" for "moteur" ever safe?
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.
Which is more common, "meur" or "moteur"?
"moteur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,705 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.

What to do next

You've compared "meur" and "moteur". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meur" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "moteur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #208,354 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meur" and "moteur" 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 #208,354 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