friendsvssealsTell them apart

Which to use

“friends” and “seals” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#11,235
“friends” frequency rank
#42,123
“seals” frequency rank
53358
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature friends seals
Definition Plural des Substantivs friend Plural des Substantivs seal

Letter map: friends vs seals

Shared letters muted; letters that set friends and seals apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. friends runs 7 letters (CCVVCCC) against seals's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
friends
5 ch
seals

Spelling & dictionary notes on friends vs seals

friends and seals are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53358, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

friends is recorded at frequency rank #11,235, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. seals is at rank #42,123, tagged as anoun, 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 53358, this pair ranks #1,061,159 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of friends vs seals

Shared letters: es. Private to "friends": dfinr. Private to "seals": al.

"friends" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCCC  ·  "seals" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • friendsffriends · firends · freinds · friedns · friendds · friendss · friennds · friensd
  • sealsesals · sealls · sealss · seasl · selas · sseals

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "friends" for "seals" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "friends" vs "seals" - which ranks higher?
"friends" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,235 in our German list, against #42,123 for "seals". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "friends" and "seals".

  • Full dictionary entry for "friends" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "seals" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,061,159 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "friends" and "seals" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs seals". 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 #1,061,159 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