meurtvsmeurtriWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: meurt is a verb, meurtri is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“meurt” is a verb and “meurtri” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,786
“meurt” frequency rank
#34,188
“meurtri” frequency rank
36974
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meurt meurtri
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif du verbe mourir. Qui est marqué d'une meurtrissure.

Where the eye mixes meurt and meurtri

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. meurt runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against meurtri's 7 (CVVCCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
meurt
7 ch
meurtri

Look-alike desk: meurt vs meurtri

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: meurt is \mœʁ\ while meurtri is \mœʁ.tʁi\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “meurt” sits inside “meurtri”, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 36974, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meurt is recorded at frequency rank #2,786, classified as averb, pronounced \mœʁ\. meurtri is at rank #34,188, tagged as anadj, pronounced \mœʁ.tʁi\.

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 36974, this pair ranks #265,782 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of meurt vs meurtri

Shared letters: emrtu. Private to "meurt": -. Private to "meurtri": i.

"meurt" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "meurtri" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meurt ← emurt · merut · meurrt · meurtt · meutr · mmeurt · muert
  • meurtri ← emurtri · merutri · meurrti · meurrtri · meurtir · meurtrri · meurttri · meutrri

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "meurt" for "meurtri" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "meurt" is a verb and "meurtri" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "meurt" or "meurtri" show up more?
"meurt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,786 in our French list, against #34,188 for "meurtri". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meurt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meurtri" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #265,782 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meurt" and "meurtri" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "meurtri vs meutre". 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 #265,782 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