friendsvsopenWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#11,235
“friends” frequency rank
#2,607
“open” frequency rank
13842
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature friends open
Definition Plural des Substantivs friend etwas ist nicht geschlossen

Letter map: friends vs open

Shared letters muted; letters that set friends and open apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

7 ch
friends
4 ch
open

Role in the sentence - friends and open

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: friends is anoun and openanadjective. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13842, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

friends is recorded at frequency rank #11,235, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. open is at rank #2,607, 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 13842, this pair ranks #1,955,314 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of friends vs open

Shared letters: en. Private to "friends": dfirs. Private to "open": op.

"friends" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCCC  ·  "open" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • friendsffriends · firends · freinds · friedns · friendds · friendss · friennds · friensd
  • openoepn · openn · opne · oppen · poen

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "friends" and "open" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "friends" is a noun and "open" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "friends" or "open" show up more?
"open" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,607 in our German list, against #11,235 for "friends". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "friends" vs "open" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "friends" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "open" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,955,314 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "friends" and "open" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "friends 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 #1,955,314 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