fragmentvsopeningWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#23,134
“fragment” frequency rank
#30,228
“opening” frequency rank
53362
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fragment opening
Definition Splitter, Bruchstück, Fragment, Scherbe Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs open

Letter map: fragment vs opening

Shared letters muted; letters that set fragment and opening apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. fragment runs 8 letters (CCVCCVCC) against opening's 7 (VCVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
fragment
7 ch
opening

Role in the sentence - fragment and opening

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fragment is anoun and openingaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53362, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fragment is recorded at frequency rank #23,134, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. opening is at rank #30,228, 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 53362, this pair ranks #1,060,995 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fragment vs opening

Shared letters: egn. Private to "fragment": afmrt. Private to "opening": iop.

"fragment" · 8 letters · shape CCVCCVCC  ·  "opening" · 7 letters · shape VCVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fragmentfargment · ffragment · fragemnt · fraggment · fragmennt · fragmentt · fragmetn · fragmment
  • openingoepning · opeinng · openign · openingg · openinng · opennig · openning · opneing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fragment" for "opening" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fragment" is a noun and "opening" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "fragment" or "opening" show up more?
"fragment" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #23,134 in our German list, against #30,228 for "opening". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "fragment" and "opening".

  • Full dictionary entry for "fragment" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "opening" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,060,995 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fragment" and "opening" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "opening 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 #1,060,995 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