muervsmuletWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#48,671
“muer” frequency rank
#32,921
“mulet” frequency rank
81592
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature muer mulet
Definition Changer de poil, de plumes, de peau, etc., en parlant des animaux. Équidé mâle né d’un âne et d’une jument, ou d’un cheval et d’une ânesse (on dit plus précisément dans ce cas bardot), et généralement stérile.

Where the eye mixes muer and mulet

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

4 ch
muer
5 ch
mulet

Look-alike desk: muer vs mulet

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: muer is \mɥe\ while mulet is \my.lɛ\. 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 81592, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

muer is recorded at frequency rank #48,671, classified as averb, pronounced \mɥe\. mulet is at rank #32,921, tagged as anoun, pronounced \my.lɛ\.

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 81592, this pair ranks #18,420 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of muer vs mulet

Shared letters: emu. Private to "muer": r. Private to "mulet": lt.

"muer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "mulet" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • muer ← mmuer · muerr · umer
  • mulet ← mluet · mmulet · muelt · mulett · mullet · multe · umlet

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "muer" and "mulet" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "muer" is a verb and "mulet" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "muer" or "mulet"?
"mulet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #32,921 in our French list, against #48,671 for "muer". 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 "muer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mulet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,420 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "muer" and "mulet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mud vs muer". 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 #18,420 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