aprèsvsarmsTell them apart

Quick tell: après is a preposition, arms is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“après” is a preposition and “arms” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,342
“après” frequency rank
#25,891
“arms” frequency rank
68233
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature après arms
Definition Relation, bei der das mitnach nach Plural des Substantivs arm

Letter map: après vs arms

Shared letters muted; letters that set après and arms apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. après runs 5 letters (VCCVC) against arms's 4 (VCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
après
4 ch
arms

Role in the sentence - après and arms

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: après is apreposition and armsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68233, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

après is recorded at frequency rank #42,342, classified as aprep, pronounced [a.pʁɛ]. arms is at rank #25,891, 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 68233, this pair ranks #514,415 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of après vs arms

Shared letters: ars. Private to "après": pè. Private to "arms": m.

"après" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "arms" · 4 letters · shape VCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • arms ← armms · armss · arrms · arsm · rams

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "après" for "arms" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "après" is a preposition and "arms" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "après" vs "arms" - which ranks higher?
"arms" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,891 in our German list, against #42,342 for "après". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "après" and "arms". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "après" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "arms" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #514,415 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "après" and "arms" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "apel vs après". 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 #514,415 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