bainvsbareWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: bain is a noun, bare is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“bain” is a noun and “bare” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,234
“bain” frequency rank
#31,448
“bare” frequency rank
78682
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bain bare
Definition Bad Nominativ Singular Femininum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs bar

Letter map: bain vs bare

Shared letters muted; letters that set bain and bare apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. bain (CVVC) and bare (CVCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
bain
4 ch
bare

Part-of-speech tell for bain / bare

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: bain is anoun and bareanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78682, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bain is recorded at frequency rank #47,234, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. bare is at rank #31,448, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈbaːʁə].

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 78682, this pair ranks #232,860 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of bain vs bare

Shared letters: ab. Private to "bain": in. Private to "bare": er.

"bain" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "bare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bain ← abin · bainn · bani · bbain
  • bare ← barre · bbare · brae

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "bain" and "bare" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "bain" is a noun and "bare" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "bain" or "bare" show up more?
"bare" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #31,448 in our German list, against #47,234 for "bain". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "bain" and "bare".

  • Full dictionary entry for "bain" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "bare" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #232,860 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bain" and "bare" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bain 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 #232,860 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