frozenvsfrühenTell them apart

Quick tell: frozen is a verb, frühen is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“frozen” is a verb and “frühen” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,941
“frozen” frequency rank
#2,025
“frühen” frequency rank
41966
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature frozen frühen
Definition Partizip Perfekt (past participle) des Verbs freeze Genitiv Singular Maskulinum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs früh

Letter map: frozen vs frühen

Shared letters muted; letters that set frozen and frühen apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. frozen and frühen follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
frozen
6 ch
frühen

Grammar separator: frozen vs frühen

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: frozen is averb and frühenanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41966, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

frozen is recorded at frequency rank #39,941, classified as averb, pronounced […]. frühen is at rank #2,025, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈfʁyːən].

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 41966, this pair ranks #1,463,655 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of frozen vs frühen

Shared letters: efnr. Private to "frozen": oz. Private to "frühen": hü.

"frozen" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC  ·  "frühen" · 6 letters · shape CCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • frozen ← ffrozen · forzen · froezn · frozenn · frozne · frozzen · frrozen · frzoen

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "frozen" and "frühen" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "frozen" is a verb and "frühen" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "frozen" or "frühen" show up more?
"frühen" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,025 in our German list, against #39,941 for "frozen". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "frozen" vs "frühen" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "frozen" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "frühen" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,463,655 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "frozen" and "frühen" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "frozen 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 #1,463,655 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