close vs cos, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“close” is a noun and “cos” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,880
“close” frequency rank: #29,065
“cos” frequency rank: 49945
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	close	cos
Definition	die Sackgasse	Kosinus

Letter map: close vs cos

Shared letters muted; letters that set close and cos apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch

3 ch

cos

Grammar separator: close vs cos

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: close is anoun and cosanabbrev. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49945, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

close is recorded at frequency rank #20,880, classified as anoun, pronounced [kləʊz]. cos is at rank #29,065, tagged as anabbrev.

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 49945, this pair ranks #1,192,471 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of close vs cos

Shared letters: cos. Private to "close": el. Private to "cos": -.

"close" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV · "cos" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

close ← cclose · cllose · cloes · closse · clsoe · colse · lcose

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "close" for "cos" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "close" is a noun and "cos" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "close" or "cos" show up more?

"close" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #20,880 in our German list, against #29,065 for "cos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "close" and "cos". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "close" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "cos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,192,471 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"close" and "cos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "CCS vs cos". 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 #1,192,471 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.