muervsmûreWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#48,671
“muer” frequency rank
#22,950
“mûre” frequency rank
71621
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature muer mûre
Definition Changer de poil, de plumes, de peau, etc., en parlant des animaux. Fruit composé comestible des mûriers (Morus) de couleur d’abord blanchâtre, puis rouge et enfin noire à maturité. Il est composé de petites baies globuleuses formées par le périanthe devenu charnu et portant un petit akène qui est le vrai fruit, et accolées les unes aux autres en épi.

Where the eye mixes muer and mûre

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

4 ch
muer
4 ch
mûre

Why the eye confuses muer with mûre

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: muer is \mɥe\ while mûre is \myʁ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71621, 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\. mûre is at rank #22,950, tagged as anoun, pronounced \myʁ\.

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 71621, this pair ranks #46,924 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of muer vs mûre

Shared letters: emr. Private to "muer": u. Private to "mûre": û.

"muer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "mûre" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • muer ← mmuer · muerr · umer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "muer" and "mûre" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "muer" is a verb and "mûre" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "muer" vs "mûre" - which ranks higher?
"mûre" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,950 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.

Useful next steps

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 "mûre" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #46,924 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "muer" and "mûre" 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 #46,924 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