amvsarmyTell them apart

Quick tell: am is a abbrev, army is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“am” is an abbrev and “army” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47
“am” frequency rank
#11,593
“army” frequency rank
11640
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature am army
Definition Angabe eines Zeitpunkts - wann? Heer

Where the eye mixes am and army

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

2 ch
am
4 ch
army

Visual trap between am and army

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: am is [am] while army is [ˈɑːmɪ]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (abbrev vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11640, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

am is recorded at frequency rank #47, classified as anabbrev, pronounced [am]. army is at rank #11,593, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈɑːmɪ].

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 11640, this pair ranks #1,968,740 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of am vs army

Shared letters: am. Private to "am": -. Private to "army": ry.

"am" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "army" · 4 letters · shape VCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • armyarmmy · armyy · arrmy · arym · ramy

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "am" for "army" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "am" is an abbrev and "army" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "am" or "army"?
"am" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #47 in our German list, against #11,593 for "army". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "am" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "army" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,968,740 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "am" and "army" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "arma vs army". 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 #1,968,740 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