falconvsflyingTell them apart

Quick tell: falcon is a noun, flying is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“falcon” is a noun and “flying” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#29,119
“falcon” frequency rank
#23,936
“flying” frequency rank
53055
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature falcon flying
Definition der Falke Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs fly

Letter map: falcon vs flying

Shared letters muted; letters that set falcon and flying apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. falcon (CVCCVC) and flying (CCVVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
falcon
6 ch
flying

Part-of-speech tell for falcon / flying

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: falcon is anoun and flyingaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 5 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53055, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

falcon is recorded at frequency rank #29,119, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. flying is at rank #23,936, 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 53055, this pair ranks #1,072,859 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of falcon vs flying

Shared letters: fln. Private to "falcon": aco. Private to "flying": giy.

"falcon" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "flying" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • falconaflcon · faclon · falccon · falcno · falconn · fallcon · falocn · ffalcon
  • flyingfflying · fliyng · fllying · flyign · flyingg · flyinng · flynig · flyying

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "falcon" for "flying" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "falcon" is a noun and "flying" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "falcon" or "flying" show up more?
"flying" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,936 in our German list, against #29,119 for "falcon". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "falcon" and "flying". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "falcon" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "flying" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,072,859 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "falcon" and "flying" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "falcon 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 #1,072,859 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