minervsmuterWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#25,047
“miner” frequency rank
#42,475
“muter” frequency rank
67522
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature miner muter
Definition Creuser par-dessous un terrain, un rocher pour provoquer un effondrement ou pour y placer une mine. Changer de forme, voire évoluer.

Where the eye mixes miner and muter

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. miner and muter follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
miner
5 ch
muter

Why the eye confuses miner with muter

A purely visual mix-up. miner (\mi.ne\) and muter (\my.te\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67522, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

miner is recorded at frequency rank #25,047, classified as averb, pronounced \mi.ne\. muter is at rank #42,475, tagged as averb, pronounced \my.te\.

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 67522, this pair ranks #63,071 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of miner vs muter

Shared letters: emr. Private to "miner": in. Private to "muter": tu.

"miner" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "muter" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • miner ← imner · mienr · minerr · minner · minre · mminer · mnier
  • muter ← mmuter · mtuer · muetr · muterr · mutre · mutter · umter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "miner" for "muter" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\mi.ne\ versus \my.te\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "miner" vs "muter" - which ranks higher?
"miner" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,047 in our French list, against #42,475 for "muter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "miner" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "muter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #63,071 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "miner" and "muter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Meier vs muter". 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 #63,071 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