eavsehTell them apart

Quick tell: ea is a unknown, eh is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ea” is an unknown and “eh” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#10,458
“ea” frequency rank
#1,106
“eh” frequency rank
11564
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ea eh
Definition Nominativ Singular Femininum des Pronomens is auf alle Fälle; auch ohne eine weitere Voraussetzung

Letter map: ea vs eh

Shared letters muted; letters that set ea and eh apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch
ea
2 ch
eh

Role in the sentence - ea and eh

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ea is anunknown and ehanadverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - a in “ea” becomes h in “eh”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11564, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ea is recorded at frequency rank #10,458, classified as anunknown, pronounced […]. eh is at rank #1,106, tagged as anadv, pronounced [eː].

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 11564, this pair ranks #1,969,195 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of ea vs eh

Shared letters: e. Private to "ea": a. Private to "eh": h.

"ea" · 2 letters · shape VV  ·  "eh" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ea" for "eh" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ea" is an unknown and "eh" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "ea" vs "eh" - which ranks higher?
"eh" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,106 in our German list, against #10,458 for "ea". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "ea" vs "eh" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ea" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "eh" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,969,195 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ea" and "eh" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "ea vs puzzles". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,969,195 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