DAT vs den, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“DAT” is an abbrev and “den” is an unknown - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#6,524
“DAT” frequency rank: #10
“den” frequency rank: 6534
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	DAT	den
Definition	Abkürzung für „digital audio tape“ (Digitales Audio Tonband)	Akkusativ Singular Maskulinum des bestimmten Artikels der

Letter map: DAT vs den

Shared letters muted; letters that set DAT and den apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

DAT

3 ch

den

Part-of-speech tell for DAT / den

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: DAT is anabbrev and denanunknown. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6534, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

DAT is recorded at frequency rank #6,524, classified as anabbrev, pronounced […]. den is at rank #10, tagged as anunknown, pronounced [deːn].

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 6534, this pair ranks #1,991,309 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of DAT vs den

Shared letters: d. Private to "DAT": at. Private to "den": en.

"DAT" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "den" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "DAT" for "den" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "DAT" is an abbrev and "den" an unknown, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "DAT" or "den" show up more?

"den" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10 in our German list, against #6,524 for "DAT". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "DAT" vs "den" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "DAT" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "den" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,991,309 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"DAT" and "den" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "DAT vs puzzles". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,991,309 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.