collvscosWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: coll is a noun, cos is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#42,406
“coll” frequency rank
#29,065
“cos” frequency rank
71471
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature coll cos
Definition der Hals, das Genick Kosinus

Letter map: coll vs cos

Shared letters muted; letters that set coll and cos apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
coll
3 ch
cos

Part-of-speech tell for coll / cos

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: coll is anoun and cosanabbrev. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 71471, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

coll is recorded at frequency rank #42,406, classified as anoun, pronounced [kɔʎ]. 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 71471, this pair ranks #415,817 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of coll vs cos

Shared letters: co. Private to "coll": l. Private to "cos": s.

"coll" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "cos" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • collccoll · clol · ocll

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "coll" and "cos" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "coll" is a noun and "cos" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "coll" vs "cos" - which ranks higher?
"cos" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,065 in our German list, against #42,406 for "coll". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "coll" and "cos".

  • Full dictionary entry for "coll" 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 #415,817 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "coll" and "cos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Cali vs coll". 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 #415,817 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