brunvsburnWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: brun is a adjective, burn is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#48,026
“brun” frequency rank
#18,504
“burn” frequency rank
66530
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature brun burn
Definition braun verbrannte Stelle

Letter map: brun vs burn

Shared letters muted; letters that set brun and burn apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
brun
4 ch
burn

Grammar separator: brun vs burn

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: brun is anadjective and burnanoun. On the page they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (ru ↔ ur) - a transposition the eye reads straight past. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 66530, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

brun is recorded at frequency rank #48,026, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. burn is at rank #18,504, tagged as anoun, pronounced [bɜːn].

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 66530, this pair ranks #570,139 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of brun vs burn

Shared letters: bnru. Private to "brun": -. Private to "burn": -.

"brun" · 4 letters · shape CCVC  ·  "burn" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • brunbbrun · brnu · brrun · brunn · rbun
  • burnbburn · bunr · burnn · burrn · ubrn

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "brun" and "burn" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "brun" is an adjective and "burn" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "brun" or "burn" show up more?
"burn" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,504 in our German list, against #48,026 for "brun". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "brun" vs "burn" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "brun" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "burn" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #570,139 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "brun" and "burn" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "brun 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 #570,139 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