camevscrimeWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#37,428
“came” frequency rank
#20,211
“crime” frequency rank
57639
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature came crime
Definition Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs come Verbrechen

Letter map: came vs crime

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

4 ch
came
5 ch
crime

Role in the sentence - came and crime

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: came is averb and crimeanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57639, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

came is recorded at frequency rank #37,428, classified as averb, pronounced […]. crime is at rank #20,211, tagged as anoun, pronounced [kɹaɪm].

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 57639, this pair ranks #893,591 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of came vs crime

Shared letters: cem. Private to "came": a. Private to "crime": ir.

"came" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "crime" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • came ← acme · caem · camme · ccame · cmae
  • crime ← ccrime · cirme · criem · crimme · crmie · crrime · rcime

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "came" and "crime" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "came" is a verb and "crime" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "came" or "crime" show up more?
"crime" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,211 in our German list, against #37,428 for "came". 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 "came" and "crime".

  • Full dictionary entry for "came" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "crime" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #893,591 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "came" and "crime" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "came 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 #893,591 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