miraclesvsmiragesTell them apart

Which to use

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

#8,889
“miracles” frequency rank
#43,014
“mirages” frequency rank
51903
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature miracles mirages
Definition Pluriel de miracle. Pluriel de mirage.

Where the eye mixes miracles and mirages

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

8 ch
miracles
7 ch
mirages

Visual trap between miracles and mirages

A purely visual mix-up. miracles (\mi.ʁakl\) and mirages (\mi.ʁaʒ\) 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 51903, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

miracles is recorded at frequency rank #8,889, classified as anoun, pronounced \mi.ʁakl\. mirages is at rank #43,014, tagged as anoun, pronounced \mi.ʁaʒ\.

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 51903, this pair ranks #151,594 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of miracles vs mirages

Shared letters: aeimrs. Private to "miracles": cl. Private to "mirages": g.

"miracles" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCCVC  ·  "mirages" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • miraclesimracles · miarcles · miraccles · miracels · miracless · miraclles · miraclse · miralces
  • miragesimrages · miarges · miraegs · miragess · miragges · miragse · mirgaes · mirrages

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "miracles" for "mirages" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\mi.ʁakl\ versus \mi.ʁaʒ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "miracles" vs "mirages" - which ranks higher?
"miracles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,889 in our French list, against #43,014 for "mirages". 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 "miracles" and "mirages" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "miracles" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mirages" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #151,594 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "miracles" and "mirages" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mirages vs mitigés". 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 #151,594 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