bistvsburtTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#225
“bist” frequency rank
#40,452
“burt” frequency rank
40677
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature bist burt
Definition 2. Person Singular Präsens Indikativ des Verbs sein Steinbutte

Letter map: bist vs burt

Shared letters muted; letters that set bist and burt apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
bist
4 ch
burt

Part-of-speech tell for bist / burt

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: bist is averb and burtanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40677, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

bist is recorded at frequency rank #225, classified as averb, pronounced [bɪst]. burt is at rank #40,452, 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 40677, this pair ranks #1,501,584 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of bist vs burt

Shared letters: bt. Private to "bist": is. Private to "burt": ru.

"bist" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "burt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • bistbbist · bisst · bistt · bsit · ibst
  • burtbburt · burrt · burtt · butr · ubrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "bist" for "burt" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "bist" is a verb and "burt" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "bist" or "burt"?
"bist" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #225 in our German list, against #40,452 for "burt". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "bist" vs "burt" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "bist" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "burt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,501,584 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "bist" and "burt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "burt 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 #1,501,584 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