mag vs mays, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“mag” is an unknown and “mays” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#411
“mag” frequency rank: #44,064
“mays” frequency rank: 44475
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	mag	mays
Definition	1. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv von mögen	das Artepitheton für den Mais (Zea mays)

Letter map: mag vs mays

Shared letters muted; letters that set mag and mays apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

mag

4 ch

mays

Role in the sentence - mag and mays

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: mag is anunknown and maysanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 44475, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mag is recorded at frequency rank #411, classified as anunknown, pronounced [maːk]. mays is at rank #44,064, tagged as anoun, pronounced […].

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 44475, this pair ranks #1,385,007 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mag vs mays

Shared letters: am. Private to "mag": g. Private to "mays": sy.

"mag" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "mays" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

mays ← amys · masy · mayss · mayys · mmays · myas

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mag" for "mays" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "mag" is an unknown and "mays" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "mag" or "mays"?

"mag" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #411 in our German list, against #44,064 for "mays". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "mag" and "mays". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "mag" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "mays" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,385,007 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"mag" and "mays" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mays vs puzzles". 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 #1,385,007 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.