farmvsnearTell them apart

Quick tell: farm is a noun, near is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#9,186
“farm” frequency rank
#33,730
“near” frequency rank
42916
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature farm near
Definition Farm, Bauernhof nahe

Letter map: farm vs near

Shared letters muted; letters that set farm and near apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. farm (CVCC) and near (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
farm
4 ch
near

Part-of-speech tell for farm / near

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: farm is anoun and nearanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42916, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

farm is recorded at frequency rank #9,186, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. near is at rank #33,730, tagged as anadj, 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 42916, this pair ranks #1,434,451 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of farm vs near

Shared letters: ar. Private to "farm": fm. Private to "near": en.

"farm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "near" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • farmafrm · famr · farmm · farrm · ffarm · fram
  • nearenar · naer · nearr · nera · nnear

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "farm" and "near" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "farm" is a noun and "near" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "farm" or "near" show up more?
"farm" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,186 in our German list, against #33,730 for "near". 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 "farm" and "near".

  • Full dictionary entry for "farm" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "near" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,434,451 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "farm" and "near" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "near 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 #1,434,451 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