evilvshungWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#15,620
“evil” frequency rank
#35,242
“hung” frequency rank
50862
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature evil hung
Definition böse Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs hang

Letter map: evil vs hung

Shared letters muted; letters that set evil and hung apart highlighted. No shared letter run. evil (VCVC) and hung (CVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
evil
4 ch
hung

Grammar separator: evil vs hung

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: evil is anadjective and hungaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50862, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

evil is recorded at frequency rank #15,620, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. hung is at rank #35,242, 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 50862, this pair ranks #1,157,526 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of evil vs hung

Shared letters: none. Private to "evil": eilv. Private to "hung": ghnu.

"evil" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "hung" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • evileivl · evill · evli · evvil
  • hunghhung · hnug · hugn · hungg · hunng · uhng

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "evil" and "hung" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "evil" is an adjective and "hung" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "evil" or "hung" show up more?
"evil" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,620 in our German list, against #35,242 for "hung". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "evil" and "hung".

  • Full dictionary entry for "evil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hung" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,157,526 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "evil" and "hung" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hung 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 #1,157,526 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