mortevsmutéWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: morte is a noun, muté is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“morte” is a noun and “muté” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,877
“morte” frequency rank
#24,292
“muté” frequency rank
26169
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature morte muté
Definition Femme décédée ; défunte. Se dit d’un vin dont la fermentation a été stoppée par l’ajout d’alcool ou d'acide sulfureux lui permettant ainsi de garder des sucres résiduels.

Where the eye mixes morte and muté

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

5 ch
morte
4 ch
muté

Why the eye confuses morte with muté

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: morte is \mɔʁt\ while muté is \my.te\. 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 (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26169, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

morte is recorded at frequency rank #1,877, classified as anoun, pronounced \mɔʁt\. muté is at rank #24,292, tagged as anadj, 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 26169, this pair ranks #336,734 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of morte vs muté

Shared letters: mt. Private to "morte": eor. Private to "muté": .

"morte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "muté" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mortemmorte · morrte · mortte · motre · mrote · omrte

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "morte" and "muté" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "morte" is a noun and "muté" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "morte" or "muté"?
"morte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,877 in our French list, against #24,292 for "muté". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "morte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "muté" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #336,734 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "morte" and "muté" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mud vs muté". 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 #336,734 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