friendsvswrittenTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#11,235
“friends” frequency rank
#43,644
“written” frequency rank
54879
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature friends written
Definition Plural des Substantivs friend Partizip Perfekt (past participle) des Verbs write

Letter map: friends vs written

Shared letters muted; letters that set friends and written apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. friends (CCVVCCC) and written (CCVCCVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

7 ch
friends
7 ch
written

Part-of-speech tell for friends / written

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: friends is anoun and writtenaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 5 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54879, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

friends is recorded at frequency rank #11,235, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. written is at rank #43,644, 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 54879, this pair ranks #1,001,419 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of friends vs written

Shared letters: einr. Private to "friends": dfs. Private to "written": tw.

"friends" · 7 letters · shape CCVVCCC  ·  "written" · 7 letters · shape CCVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • friends ← ffriends · firends · freinds · friedns · friendds · friendss · friennds · friensd
  • written ← rwitten · wirtten · writen · writetn · writtenn · writtne · wrritten · wrtiten

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "friends" for "written" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "friends" is a noun and "written" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "friends" or "written"?
"friends" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,235 in our German list, against #43,644 for "written". 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 "written".

  • Full dictionary entry for "friends" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "written" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,001,419 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "friends" and "written" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs written". 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 #1,001,419 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