fortunevsstatusTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#30,054
“fortune” frequency rank
#2,518
“status” frequency rank
32572
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fortune status
Definition Schicksal, Zukunft Konditional Aktiv des Verbs stati

Letter map: fortune vs status

Shared letters muted; letters that set fortune and status apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

7 ch
fortune
6 ch
status

Grammar separator: fortune vs status

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fortune is anoun and statusaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 32572, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fortune is recorded at frequency rank #30,054, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. status is at rank #2,518, 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 32572, this pair ranks #1,704,802 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of fortune vs status

Shared letters: tu. Private to "fortune": efnor. Private to "status": as.

"fortune" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV  ·  "status" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fortuneffortune · forrtune · fortnue · forttune · fortuen · fortunne · forutne · fotrune
  • statussattus · sstatus · statsu · stattus · statuss · stauts · sttatus · sttaus

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fortune" for "status" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fortune" is a noun and "status" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "fortune" or "status" show up more?
"status" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,518 in our German list, against #30,054 for "fortune". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "fortune" and "status". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fortune" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "status" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,704,802 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fortune" and "status" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fortune 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 #1,704,802 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