maasvsmagesTell them apart

Which to use

“maas” and “mages” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#46,597
“maas” frequency rank
#45,499
“mages” frequency rank
92096
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maas mages
Definition sour milk plural of mage

Where the eye mixes maas and mages

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. maas runs 4 letters (CVVC) against mages's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
maas
5 ch
mages

Look-alike desk: maas vs mages

A purely visual mix-up. maas (/mɑːs/) and mages (/ˈmeɪ.d͡ʒɪz/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 92096, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maas is recorded at frequency rank #46,597, classified as anoun, pronounced /mɑːs/. mages is at rank #45,499, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈmeɪ.d͡ʒɪz/.

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 92096, this pair ranks #2,845 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of maas vs mages

Shared letters: ams. Private to "maas": -. Private to "mages": eg.

"maas" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "mages" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maas ← mmaas
  • mages ← amges · maegs · magess · magges · magse · mgaes · mmages

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maas" for "mages" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/mɑːs/ versus /ˈmeɪ.d͡ʒɪz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary English text, does "maas" or "mages" show up more?
"mages" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #45,499 in our English list, against #46,597 for "maas". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "maas" and "mages" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maas" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mages" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #2,845 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maas" and "mages" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maas vs MPAA". 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 #2,845 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list