Which to use
“magus” is a noun and “Mavis” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #46,600
- “magus” frequency rank
- #34,186
- “Mavis” frequency rank
- 80786
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | magus | Mavis |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A magician; (derogatory) a conjurer or sorcerer, especially one who is a charlatan or trickster. | A female given name from English. |
Where the eye mixes magus and Mavis
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. magus and Mavis follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Visual trap between magus and Mavis
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: magus is /ˈmeɪɡəs/ while Mavis is /ˈmeɪvɪs/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs name), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 80786, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
magus is recorded at frequency rank #46,600, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmeɪɡəs/. Mavis is at rank #34,186, tagged as aname, pronounced /ˈmeɪvɪs/.
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 80786, this pair ranks #19,070 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of magus vs Mavis
Shared letters: ams. Private to "magus": gu. Private to "Mavis": iv.
"magus" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "Mavis" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "magus" and "Mavis" be used interchangeably?
Frequency check: "magus" vs "Mavis" - which ranks higher?
After this comparison
Eye-level mix-up between "magus" and "Mavis" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "magus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "Mavis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #19,070 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "magus" and "Mavis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "magus vs MGS". 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 #19,070 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.