evilvsmissingWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#15,620
“evil” frequency rank
#43,357
“missing” frequency rank
58977
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature evil missing
Definition böse Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs miss

Letter map: evil vs missing

Shared letters muted; letters that set evil and missing apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. evil runs 4 letters (VCVC) against missing's 7 (CVCCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
evil
7 ch
missing

Part-of-speech tell for evil / missing

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: evil is anadjective and missingaverb. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58977, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

evil is recorded at frequency rank #15,620, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. missing is at rank #43,357, 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 58977, this pair ranks #841,978 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of evil vs missing

Shared letters: i. Private to "evil": elv. Private to "missing": gmns.

"evil" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "missing" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • evileivl · evill · evli · evvil
  • missingimssing · mising · misisng · missign · missingg · missinng · missnig · mißing

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "evil" and "missing" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "evil" is an adjective and "missing" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "evil" vs "missing" - which ranks higher?
"evil" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,620 in our German list, against #43,357 for "missing". 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 "evil" and "missing".

  • Full dictionary entry for "evil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "missing" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #841,978 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "evil" and "missing" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "missing 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 #841,978 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