mutévsmuterTell them apart

Quick tell: muté is a adjective, muter is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#24,292
“muté” frequency rank
#42,475
“muter” frequency rank
66767
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature muté muter
Definition 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. Changer de forme, voire évoluer.

Same sound, different letters: muté vs muter

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters. muté runs 4 letters (CVCV) against muter's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
muté
5 ch
muter

Homophone desk: muté vs muter

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: muté and muter carry the same recorded pronunciation, \my.te\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anadjective, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66767, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

muté is recorded at frequency rank #24,292, classified as anadj, pronounced \my.te\. muter is at rank #42,475, tagged as averb, 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 66767, this pair ranks #66,335 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of muté vs muter

Shared letters: mtu. Private to "muté": é. Private to "muter": er.

"muté" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "muter" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • muter ← mmuter · mtuer · muetr · muterr · mutre · mutter · umter

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "muté" for "muter" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "muté" is an adjective and "muter" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "muté" vs "muter" - which ranks higher?
"muté" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,292 in our French list, against #42,475 for "muter". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

"muté" and "muter" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "muté" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "muter" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #66,335 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "muté" and "muter" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Meier vs muter". 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 #66,335 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