eldervsminingWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: elder is a noun, mining is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“elder” is a noun and “mining” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#35,740
“elder” frequency rank
#22,436
“mining” frequency rank
58176
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature elder mining
Definition ältere Person: Älterer/Ältere Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs mine

Letter map: elder vs mining

Shared letters muted; letters that set elder and mining apart highlighted. No shared letter run. elder runs 5 letters (VCCVC) against mining's 6 (CVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
elder
6 ch
mining

Grammar separator: elder vs mining

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: elder is anoun and miningaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58176, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

elder is recorded at frequency rank #35,740, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. mining is at rank #22,436, tagged as averb, 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 58176, this pair ranks #872,824 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of elder vs mining

Shared letters: none. Private to "elder": delr. Private to "mining": gimn.

"elder" · 5 letters · shape VCCVC  ·  "mining" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • eldereldder · elderr · eldre · eledr · ellder
  • miningimning · miinng · minign · miningg · mininng · minnig · minning · mmining

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "elder" for "mining" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "elder" is a noun and "mining" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "elder" or "mining" show up more?
"mining" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,436 in our German list, against #35,740 for "elder". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "elder" and "mining".

  • Full dictionary entry for "elder" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mining" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #872,824 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "elder" and "mining" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "elder 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 #872,824 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