DammvsdassTell them apart

Quick tell: Damm is a noun, dass is a conjunction, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Damm” is a noun and “dass” is a conjunction - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#9,347
“Damm” frequency rank
#27
“dass” frequency rank
9374
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Damm dass
Definition durch schüttende Anhäufung von Erdmassen und/oder Felsen, Steinen errichteter Wall drückt eine Folge des Geschehens aus, Art und Weise oder Grad

Where the eye mixes Damm and dass

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. Damm and dass follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
Damm
4 ch
dass

Look-alike desk: Damm vs dass

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Damm is [dam] while dass is [das]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs conjunction), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9374, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Damm is recorded at frequency rank #9,347, classified as anoun, pronounced [dam]. dass is at rank #27, tagged as aconj, pronounced [das].

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 9374, this pair ranks #1,980,257 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Damm vs dass

Shared letters: ad. Private to "Damm": m. Private to "dass": s.

"Damm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "dass" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Dammadmm · ddamm · dmam
  • dassadss · daß · ddass · dsas

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Damm" and "dass" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Damm" is a noun and "dass" a conjunction, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Damm" or "dass" show up more?
"dass" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27 in our German list, against #9,347 for "Damm". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Damm" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dass" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,980,257 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Damm" and "dass" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "DAAD vs Damm". 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 #1,980,257 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