evilvswrittenWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#15,620
“evil” frequency rank
#43,644
“written” frequency rank
59264
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature evil written
Definition böse Partizip Perfekt (past participle) des Verbs write

Letter map: evil vs written

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

4 ch
evil
7 ch
written

Part-of-speech tell for evil / written

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: evil is anadjective and writtenaverb. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59264, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

evil is recorded at frequency rank #15,620, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. written is at rank #43,644, 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 59264, this pair ranks #831,052 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of evil vs written

Shared letters: ei. Private to "evil": lv. Private to "written": nrtw.

"evil" · 4 letters · shape VCVC  ·  "written" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • evileivl · evill · evli · evvil
  • writtenrwitten · wirtten · writen · writetn · writtenn · writtne · wrritten · wrtiten

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "evil" and "written" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "evil" is an adjective and "written" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "evil" vs "written" - which ranks higher?
"evil" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #15,620 in our German list, against #43,644 for "written". 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 "written". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "evil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "written" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #831,052 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "evil" and "written" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs written". 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 #831,052 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