muettesvsmusetteWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: muettes is a adjective, musette is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,672
“muettes” frequency rank
#45,189
“musette” frequency rank
93861
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature muettes musette
Definition Féminin pluriel de muet. Instrument de musique à vent dont le soufflet est actionné par le mouvement du bras, genre de cornemuse champêtre ; cabrette ; piva

Where the eye mixes muettes and musette

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence. muettes (CVVCCVC) and musette (CVCVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
muettes
7 ch
musette

Visual trap between muettes and musette

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: muettes is \mɥɛt\ while musette is \my.zɛt\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they are an anagram pair: the same letters reordered, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 93861, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

muettes is recorded at frequency rank #48,672, classified as anadj, pronounced \mɥɛt\. musette is at rank #45,189, tagged as anoun, pronounced \my.zɛt\.

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 93861, this pair ranks #1,987 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of muettes vs musette

Shared letters: emstu. Private to "muettes": -. Private to "musette": -.

"muettes" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC  ·  "musette" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • muettesmeuttes · mmuettes · muetes · muetets · muettess · muettse · mutetes · umettes
  • musettemmusette · msuette · muestte · musete · musetet · mussette · mustete · umsette

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "muettes" and "musette" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "muettes" is an adjective and "musette" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "muettes" or "musette" show up more?
"musette" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #45,189 in our French list, against #48,672 for "muettes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

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 "muettes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "musette" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,987 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "muettes" and "musette" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mottes vs muettes". 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 #1,987 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