costvsKölleTell them apart

Quick tell: cost is a noun, Kölle is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“cost” is a noun and “Kölle” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,668
“cost” frequency rank
#49,855
“Kölle” frequency rank
77523
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cost Kölle
Definition Kosten deutscher Nachname, Familienname

Letter map: cost vs Kölle

Shared letters muted; letters that set cost and Kölle apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

4 ch
cost
5 ch
Kölle

Part-of-speech tell for cost / Kölle

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cost is anoun and Kölleaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77523, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cost is recorded at frequency rank #27,668, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. Kölle is at rank #49,855, tagged as aname, 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 77523, this pair ranks #258,856 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cost vs Kölle

Shared letters: none. Private to "cost": cost. Private to "Kölle": eklö.

"cost" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Kölle" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • costccost · cosst · costt · cots · csot · ocst

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "cost" and "Kölle" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cost" is a noun and "Kölle" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "cost" or "Kölle" show up more?
"cost" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,668 in our German list, against #49,855 for "Kölle". 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 "cost" and "Kölle".

  • Full dictionary entry for "cost" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Kölle" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #258,856 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cost" and "Kölle" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Kölle 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 #258,856 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