dei vs den, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#7,028
“dei” frequency rank: #10
“den” frequency rank: 7038
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	dei	den
Definition	Genitiv Singular des Substantivs deus	Akkusativ Singular Maskulinum des bestimmten Artikels der

Letter map: dei vs den

Shared letters muted; letters that set dei and den apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch

dei

3 ch

den

Role in the sentence - dei and den

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: dei is anoun and denanunknown. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “dei” becomes n in “den”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7038, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dei is recorded at frequency rank #7,028, classified as anoun, 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 7038, this pair ranks #1,989,599 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of dei vs den

Shared letters: de. Private to "dei": i. Private to "den": n.

"dei" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "den" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "dei" and "den" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

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

"den" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10 in our German list, against #7,028 for "dei". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

Full dictionary entry for "dei" 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 #1,989,599 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"dei" and "den" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dei vs puzzles". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,989,599 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.