muséevsmuselerTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#1,336
“musée” frequency rank
#40,383
“museler” frequency rank
41719
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature musée museler
Definition Lieu destiné à réunir, conserver, classer et exposer les œuvres d’art, les objets et les documents intéressant les sciences et leurs applications. Garnir d’une muselière la gueule d’un animal.

Where the eye mixes musée and museler

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. musée runs 5 letters (CVCVV) against museler's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
musée
7 ch
museler

Why the eye confuses musée with museler

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: musée is \my.ze\ while museler is \my.zle\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41719, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

musée is recorded at frequency rank #1,336, classified as anoun, pronounced \my.ze\. museler is at rank #40,383, tagged as averb, pronounced \my.zle\.

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 41719, this pair ranks #231,018 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of musée vs museler

Shared letters: emsu. Private to "musée": é. Private to "museler": lr.

"musée" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "museler" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • museler ← mmuseler · msueler · muesler · museelr · muselerr · museller · muselre · musleer

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "musée" and "museler" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "musée" is a noun and "museler" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "musée" or "museler"?
"musée" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,336 in our French list, against #40,383 for "museler". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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 "musée" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "museler" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #231,018 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "musée" and "museler" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "museler vs mutiler". 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 #231,018 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