magevsmajWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“mage” and “maj” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#20,491
“mage” frequency rank
#18,249
“maj” frequency rank
38740
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature mage maj
Definition Prêtre de la religion de Zoroastre, chez les Perses et les Mèdes. Major.

Same sound, different letters: mage vs maj

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 2 letters.

4 ch
mage
3 ch
maj

Ear matches; page differs - mage and maj

This is the hard kind. mage and maj are pronounced identically (\maʒ\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38740, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

mage is recorded at frequency rank #20,491, classified as anoun, pronounced \maʒ\. maj is at rank #18,249, tagged as anoun, pronounced \maʒ\.

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 38740, this pair ranks #253,148 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of mage vs maj

Shared letters: am. Private to "mage": eg. Private to "maj": j.

"mage" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "maj" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • mageamge · maeg · magge · mgae · mmage

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "mage" for "maj" ever safe?
No. They are pronounced the same (\maʒ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "mage" or "maj"?
"maj" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,249 in our French list, against #20,491 for "mage". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"mage" and "maj" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "mage" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "maj" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #253,148 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "mage" and "maj" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mage vs MSG". 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 #253,148 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list