meurtvsmortTell them apart

Quick tell: meurt is a verb, mort is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#2,786
“meurt” frequency rank
#187
“mort” frequency rank
2973
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meurt mort
Definition Troisième personne du singulier du présent de l’indicatif du verbe mourir. Arrêt définitif des fonctions vitales (assimilation de nutriments, respiration, fonctionnement du système nerveux central).

Where the eye mixes meurt and mort

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. meurt runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against mort's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
meurt
4 ch
mort

Look-alike desk: meurt vs mort

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: meurt is \mœʁ\ while mort is \mɔʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2973, 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\. mort is at rank #187, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mɔʁ\.

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 2973, this pair ranks #435,081 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of meurt vs mort

Shared letters: mrt. Private to "meurt": eu. Private to "mort": o.

"meurt" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "mort" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meurtemurt · merut · meurrt · meurtt · meutr · mmeurt · muert
  • mortmmort · morrt · mortt · motr · mrot · omrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "meurt" and "mort" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "meurt" is a verb and "mort" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "meurt" or "mort"?
"mort" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #187 in our French list, against #2,786 for "meurt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meurt" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mort" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #435,081 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meurt" and "mort" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Méry vs meurt". 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 #435,081 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