musicvsmusingConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#279
“music” frequency rank
#46,643
“musing” frequency rank
46922
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature music musing
Definition A series of sounds organized in time, usually employing some combination of harmony, melody, rhythm, tempo, etc., often to convey a mood. thought, meditation, contemplation

Letter map: music vs musing

Shared letters muted; letters that set music and musing apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
music
6 ch
musing

Corpus notes: music and musing

music and musing are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46922, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

music is recorded at frequency rank #279, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈmjuːzɪk/. musing is at rank #46,643, tagged as anoun.

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 46922, this pair ranks #207,242 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of music vs musing

Shared letters: imsu. Private to "music": c. Private to "musing": gn.

"music" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "musing" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • musicmmusic · msuic · muisc · musci · musicc · mussic · umsic
  • musingmmusing · msuing · muisng · musign · musingg · musinng · musnig · mussing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "music" for "musing" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "music" or "musing"?
"music" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #279 in our English list, against #46,643 for "musing". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "music" and "musing". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "music" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "musing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #207,242 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "music" and "musing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "musing vs muslin". 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 #207,242 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