morivsmoyaWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#35,605
“mori” frequency rank
#45,744
“moya” frequency rank
81349
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mori moya
Definition Marabout. Troisième personne du singulier du passé simple du verbe moyer.

Where the eye mixes mori and moya

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. mori (CVCV) and moya (CVVV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
mori
4 ch
moya

Why the eye confuses mori with moya

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: mori is \mó.ri\ while moya is \mwa.ja\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81349, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mori is recorded at frequency rank #35,605, classified as anoun, pronounced \mó.ri\. moya is at rank #45,744, tagged as averb, pronounced \mwa.ja\.

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 81349, this pair ranks #18,939 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of mori vs moya

Shared letters: mo. Private to "mori": ir. Private to "moya": ay.

"mori" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "moya" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mori ← mmori · moir · morri · mroi · omri
  • moya ← mmoya · moay · moyya · myoa · omya

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mori" for "moya" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mori" is a noun and "moya" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "mori" or "moya" show up more?
"mori" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,605 in our French list, against #45,744 for "moya". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "mori" and "moya" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mori" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "moya" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,939 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mori" and "moya" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Monza vs moya". 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 #18,939 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