captainvsofficeConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#7,738
“captain” frequency rank
#5,205
“office” frequency rank
12943
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature captain office
Definition ein Schiff führen, ein Schiff befehligen Arbeitsraum für Verwaltung und Planung: Büro

Letter map: captain vs office

Shared letters muted; letters that set captain and office apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. captain runs 7 letters (CVCCVVC) against office's 6 (VCCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
captain
6 ch
office

Role in the sentence - captain and office

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: captain is averb and officeanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12943, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

captain is recorded at frequency rank #7,738, classified as averb, pronounced […]. office is at rank #5,205, 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 12943, this pair ranks #1,961,081 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of captain vs office

Shared letters: ci. Private to "captain": anpt. Private to "office": efo.

"captain" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVVC  ·  "office" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • captain ← acptain · capatin · capptain · captainn · captani · captian · capttain · catpain
  • office ← fofice · offcie · officce · offiec · ofice · ofifce

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "captain" and "office" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "captain" is a verb and "office" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "captain" or "office" show up more?
"office" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,205 in our German list, against #7,738 for "captain". 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 "captain" and "office".

  • Full dictionary entry for "captain" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "office" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,961,081 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "captain" and "office" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "captain 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 #1,961,081 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