foodsvssweetWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#43,879
“foods” frequency rank
#12,600
“sweet” frequency rank
56479
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foods sweet
Definition Plural des Substantivs food süßer Geschmack

Letter map: foods vs sweet

Shared letters muted; letters that set foods and sweet apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. foods (CVVCC) and sweet (CCVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
foods
5 ch
sweet

Part-of-speech tell for foods / sweet

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foods is anoun and sweetanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 5 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 56479, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foods is recorded at frequency rank #43,879, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. sweet is at rank #12,600, 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 56479, this pair ranks #938,552 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foods vs sweet

Shared letters: s. Private to "foods": dfo. Private to "sweet": etw.

"foods" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "sweet" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foods ← ffoods · fodos · fods · foodds · foodss · foosd · ofods
  • sweet ← sewet · ssweet · sweett · swet · swete · swweet · wseet

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foods" for "sweet" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foods" is a noun and "sweet" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "foods" vs "sweet" - which ranks higher?
"sweet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,600 in our German list, against #43,879 for "foods". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "foods" vs "sweet" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foods" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sweet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #938,552 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foods" and "sweet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foods 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 #938,552 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