costvsordersTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#27,668
“cost” frequency rank
#49,941
“orders” frequency rank
77609
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature cost orders
Definition Kosten 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs order

Letter map: cost vs orders

Shared letters muted; letters that set cost and orders apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
cost
6 ch
orders

Part-of-speech tell for cost / orders

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: cost is anoun and ordersaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 77609, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

cost is recorded at frequency rank #27,668, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. orders is at rank #49,941, 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 77609, this pair ranks #256,965 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of cost vs orders

Shared letters: os. Private to "cost": ct. Private to "orders": der.

"cost" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "orders" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • costccost · cosst · costt · cots · csot · ocst
  • ordersodrers · ordders · orderrs · orderss · ordesr · ordres · oredrs · orrders

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "cost" for "orders" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "cost" is a noun and "orders" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "cost" or "orders" show up more?
"cost" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,668 in our German list, against #49,941 for "orders". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "cost" and "orders". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "cost" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "orders" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #256,965 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "cost" and "orders" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "orders 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 #256,965 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