empirevspoweredWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#14,553
“empire” frequency rank
#38,951
“powered” frequency rank
53504
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature empire powered
Definition Imperium, Reich Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs power

Letter map: empire vs powered

Shared letters muted; letters that set empire and powered apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. empire runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against powered's 7 (CVCVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
empire
7 ch
powered

Role in the sentence - empire and powered

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: empire is anoun and poweredaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53504, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

empire is recorded at frequency rank #14,553, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. powered is at rank #38,951, 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 53504, this pair ranks #1,055,414 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of empire vs powered

Shared letters: epr. Private to "empire": im. Private to "powered": dow.

"empire" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "powered" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • empireemipre · emmpire · empier · empirre · emppire · emprie · epmire · mepire
  • poweredopwered · poewred · poweerd · powerde · poweredd · powerred · powreed · powwered

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "empire" for "powered" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "empire" is a noun and "powered" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "empire" or "powered" show up more?
"empire" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,553 in our German list, against #38,951 for "powered". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "empire" vs "powered" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "empire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "powered" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,055,414 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "empire" and "powered" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "powered 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 #1,055,414 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