donvsdonaWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“don” and “dona” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#3,645
“don” frequency rank
#44,532
“dona” frequency rank
48177
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature don dona
Definition Spende, Gabe Nominativ Plural des Substantivs donum „Gabe, Geschenk“

Letter map: don vs dona

Shared letters muted; letters that set don and dona apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
don
4 ch
dona

Corpus notes: don and dona

don and dona are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “don” sits inside “dona”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48177, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

don is recorded at frequency rank #3,645, classified as anoun, pronounced [dɔ̃]. dona is at rank #44,532, tagged as anoun, 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 48177, this pair ranks #1,258,041 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of don vs dona

Shared letters: dno. Private to "don": -. Private to "dona": a.

"don" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "dona" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • donaddona · dnoa · doan · odna

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "don" for "dona" ever safe?
No. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “don” sits inside “dona”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "don" vs "dona" - which ranks higher?
"don" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,645 in our German list, against #44,532 for "dona". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "don" and "dona". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "don" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "dona" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,258,041 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "don" and "dona" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "dona vs puzzles". 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 #1,258,041 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