CohenvsetWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Cohen is a name, et is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#16,668
“Cohen” frequency rank
#1,447
“et” frequency rank
18115
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Cohen et
Definition deutschsprachiger Nachname, Familienname Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs eat

Letter map: Cohen vs et

Shared letters muted; letters that set Cohen and et apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

5 ch
Cohen
2 ch
et

Part-of-speech tell for Cohen / et

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Cohen is aname and etaverb. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18115, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Cohen is recorded at frequency rank #16,668, classified as aname, 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 18115, this pair ranks #1,921,258 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Cohen vs et

Shared letters: e. Private to "Cohen": chno. Private to "et": t.

"Cohen" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "et" · 2 letters · shape VC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Cohenccohen · choen · coehn · cohenn · cohhen · cohne · ochen

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Cohen" and "et" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Cohen" is a name and "et" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Cohen" or "et" show up more?
"et" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,447 in our German list, against #16,668 for "Cohen". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "Cohen" 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 #1,921,258 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Cohen" and "et" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Cohen 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 #1,921,258 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