dearvsdiaWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: dear is a adjective, dia is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“dear” is an adjective and “dia” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,506
“dear” frequency rank
#21,941
“dia” frequency rank
52447
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dear dia
Definition lieb, teuer, süß, entzückend, reizend, herzig er, sie, es

Letter map: dear vs dia

Shared letters muted; letters that set dear and dia apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
dear
3 ch
dia

Part-of-speech tell for dear / dia

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dear is anadjective and diaapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52447, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dear is recorded at frequency rank #30,506, classified as anadj, pronounced [diɹ]. dia is at rank #21,941, tagged as apron, 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 52447, this pair ranks #1,096,597 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of dear vs dia

Shared letters: ad. Private to "dear": er. Private to "dia": i.

"dear" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "dia" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dearddear · dearr · dera · edar

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dear" for "dia" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dear" is an adjective and "dia" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "dear" vs "dia" - which ranks higher?
"dia" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,941 in our German list, against #30,506 for "dear". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "dear" and "dia". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dear" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dia" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,096,597 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dear" and "dia" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dear vs dörr". 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 #1,096,597 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