apelvsareWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#48,710
“apel” frequency rank
#4,019
“are” frequency rank
52729
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature apel are
Definition Apfel als Frucht des Apfelbaums 2. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens des Verbs be

Letter map: apel vs are

Shared letters muted; letters that set apel and are apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
apel
3 ch
are

Part-of-speech tell for apel / are

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: apel is anoun and areaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52729, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

apel is recorded at frequency rank #48,710, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. are is at rank #4,019, tagged as averb, pronounced [ə].

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 52729, this pair ranks #1,085,546 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of apel vs are

Shared letters: ae. Private to "apel": lp. Private to "are": r.

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

Known mistypes of this pair

  • apelaepl · pael

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "apel" for "are" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "apel" is a noun and "are" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "apel" or "are"?
"are" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,019 in our German list, against #48,710 for "apel". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "apel" vs "are" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "apel" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "are" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,085,546 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "apel" and "are" 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 #1,085,546 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