Which to use
“plague” and “plaque” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #8,468
- “plague” frequency rank
- #11,437
- “plaque” frequency rank
- 19905
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | plague | plaque |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | The bubonic plague, the pestilent disease caused by the virulent bacterium Yersinia pestis. | Any flat, thin piece of clay, ivory, metal, etc., used for ornament, or for painting pictures upon, as a dish, plate, slab, etc., hung upon a wall; also, a smaller decoration worn by a person, such as a brooch. |
Where the eye mixes plague and plaque
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. plague and plaque follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Why the eye confuses plague with plaque
A purely visual mix-up. plague (/pleɪɡ/) and plaque (/plæk/) 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 a single letter - g in “plague” becomes q in “plaque”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 19905, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
plague is recorded at frequency rank #8,468, classified as anoun, pronounced /pleɪɡ/. plaque is at rank #11,437, tagged as anoun, pronounced /plæk/.
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 19905, this pair ranks #434,896 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of plague vs plaque
Shared letters: aelpu. Private to "plague": g. Private to "plaque": q.
"plague" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV · "plaque" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVV
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "plague" for "plaque" ever safe?
In ordinary English text, does "plague" or "plaque" show up more?
What to do next
Eye-level mix-up between "plague" and "plaque" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "plague" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "plaque" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #434,896 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "plague" and "plaque" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "phage vs plague". 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 #434,896 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.