breathvsbreitWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#49,533
“breath” frequency rank
#2,332
“breit” frequency rank
51865
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature breath breit
Definition Atem horizontal seitlich ausgedehnt (in Links-Rechts-Richtung)

Letter map: breath vs breit

Shared letters muted; letters that set breath and breit apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. breath runs 6 letters (CCVVCC) against breit's 5 (CCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
breath
5 ch
breit

Role in the sentence - breath and breit

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: breath is anoun and breitanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51865, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

breath is recorded at frequency rank #49,533, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. breit is at rank #2,332, tagged as anadj, pronounced [bʁaɪ̯t].

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 51865, this pair ranks #1,119,030 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of breath vs breit

Shared letters: bert. Private to "breath": ah. Private to "breit": i.

"breath" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC  ·  "breit" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • breath ← bbreath · berath · braeth · breaht · breathh · breatth · bretah · brreath
  • breit ← bbreit · berit · breitt · breti · briet · brreit · rbeit

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "breath" and "breit" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "breath" is a noun and "breit" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "breath" or "breit"?
"breit" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,332 in our German list, against #49,533 for "breath". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "breath" and "breit". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "breath" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "breit" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,119,030 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "breath" and "breit" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "breath 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 #1,119,030 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