evilvsexilWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: evil is a adjective, exil is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“evil” is an adjective and “exil” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#15,620
“evil” frequency rank
#10,649
“exil” frequency rank
26269
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature evil exil
Definition böse Exil

Letter map: evil vs exil

Shared letters muted; letters that set evil and exil apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
evil
4 ch
exil

Part-of-speech tell for evil / exil

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: evil is anadjective and exilanoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - v in “evil” becomes x in “exil”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26269, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

evil is recorded at frequency rank #15,620, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. exil is at rank #10,649, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ɛɡ.zil].

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 26269, this pair ranks #1,820,661 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of evil vs exil

Shared letters: eil. Private to "evil": v. Private to "exil": x.

"evil" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "exil" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • evileivl · evill · evli · evvil
  • exileixl · exill · exli · exxil · xeil

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "evil" and "exil" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "evil" is an adjective and "exil" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "evil" vs "exil" - which ranks higher?
"exil" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,649 in our German list, against #15,620 for "evil". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "evil" and "exil". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "evil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "exil" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,820,661 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "evil" and "exil" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "evil 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 #1,820,661 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