evilvsguestTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#15,620
“evil” frequency rank
#38,160
“guest” frequency rank
53780
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature evil guest
Definition böse Gast

Letter map: evil vs guest

Shared letters muted; letters that set evil and guest apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. evil runs 4 letters (VCVC) against guest's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
evil
5 ch
guest

Role in the sentence - evil and guest

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: evil is anadjective and guestanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53780, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

evil is recorded at frequency rank #15,620, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. guest is at rank #38,160, 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 53780, this pair ranks #1,044,508 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of evil vs guest

Shared letters: e. Private to "evil": ilv. Private to "guest": gstu.

"evil" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "guest" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • evileivl · evill · evli · evvil
  • guestgeust · gguest · guesst · guestt · guset · ugest

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "evil" and "guest" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "evil" is an adjective and "guest" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "evil" or "guest" show up more?
"evil" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,620 in our German list, against #38,160 for "guest". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "evil" vs "guest" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "evil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guest" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,044,508 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "evil" and "guest" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guest 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 #1,044,508 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