adevsapelTell them apart

Quick tell: ade is a phrase, apel is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ade” is a phrase and “apel” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,874
“ade” frequency rank
#48,710
“apel” frequency rank
74584
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ade apel
Definition ehemals viel weiter verbreiteter, jetzt im Fränkischen, Schwäbischen und Oberschwäbischen beliebter Abschiedsgruß Apfel als Frucht des Apfelbaums

Letter map: ade vs apel

Shared letters muted; letters that set ade and apel apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ade runs 3 letters (VCV) against apel's 4 (VCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ade
4 ch
apel

Role in the sentence - ade and apel

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ade is aphrase and apelanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 74584, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ade is recorded at frequency rank #25,874, classified as aphrase, pronounced [aˈdeː]. apel is at rank #48,710, tagged as anoun, pronounced […].

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 74584, this pair ranks #329,643 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ade vs apel

Shared letters: ae. Private to "ade": d. Private to "apel": lp.

"ade" · 3 letters · shape VCV  ·  "apel" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • apel ← aepl · pael

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "ade" and "apel" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ade" is a phrase and "apel" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "ade" or "apel" show up more?
"ade" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,874 in our German list, against #48,710 for "apel". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "ade" and "apel". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ade" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "apel" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #329,643 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ade" and "apel" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "apel vs puzzles". 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 #329,643 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list