century vs et, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#21,206
“century” frequency rank: #1,447
“et” frequency rank: 22653
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	century	et
Definition	das Jahrhundert	Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs eat

Letter map: century vs et

Shared letters muted; letters that set century and et apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

7 ch

century

2 ch

Role in the sentence - century and et

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: century is anoun and etaverb. On the page they differ by 5 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 22653, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

century is recorded at frequency rank #21,206, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. et is at rank #1,447, tagged as averb, 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 22653, this pair ranks #1,871,455 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of century vs et

Shared letters: et. Private to "century": cnruy. Private to "et": -.

"century" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV · "et" · 2 letters · shape VC

Known mistypes of this pair

century ← ccentury · cenntury · centruy · centtury · centurry · centuryy · centuyr · cenutry

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "century" for "et" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "century" is a noun and "et" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "century" vs "et" - which ranks higher?

"et" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,447 in our German list, against #21,206 for "century". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "century" and "et". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "century" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "et" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,871,455 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"century" and "et" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "century 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 #1,871,455 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.