DeusvsduWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: Deus is a name, du is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Deus” is a name and “du” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#26,819
“Deus” frequency rank
#38
“du” frequency rank
26857
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Deus du
Definition Gott (des Christentums) der Angesprochene oder Angeschriebene, falls nicht die Höflichkeitsform Sie verwendet wird

Letter map: Deus vs du

Shared letters muted; letters that set Deus and du apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
Deus
2 ch
du

Part-of-speech tell for Deus / du

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Deus is aname and duapronoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26857, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Deus is recorded at frequency rank #26,819, classified as aname. du is at rank #38, tagged as apron, pronounced [duː].

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 26857, this pair ranks #1,811,294 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Deus vs du

Shared letters: du. Private to "Deus": es. Private to "du": -.

"Deus" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "du" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Deusddeus · desu · deuss · dues · edus

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Deus" and "du" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Deus" is a name and "du" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Deus" or "du" show up more?
"du" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38 in our German list, against #26,819 for "Deus". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "Deus" and "du".

  • Full dictionary entry for "Deus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "du" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,811,294 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Deus" and "du" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dess vs Deus". 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 #1,811,294 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