geravssilentWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#12,085
“gera” frequency rank
#25,311
“silent” frequency rank
37396
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature gera silent
Definition tun keine Geräusche, Töne oder Laute sind hörbar

Letter map: gera vs silent

Shared letters muted; letters that set gera and silent apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. gera runs 4 letters (CVCV) against silent's 6 (CVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
gera
6 ch
silent

Role in the sentence - gera and silent

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: gera is averb and silentanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37396, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gera is recorded at frequency rank #12,085, classified as averb, pronounced […]. silent is at rank #25,311, 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 37396, this pair ranks #1,591,372 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of gera vs silent

Shared letters: e. Private to "gera": agr. Private to "silent": ilnst.

"gera" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "silent" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • geraegra · gerra · ggera · grea
  • silentislent · sielnt · silennt · silentt · siletn · sillent · silnet · slient

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "gera" for "silent" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "gera" is a verb and "silent" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "gera" or "silent" show up more?
"gera" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,085 in our German list, against #25,311 for "silent". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "gera" and "silent". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "gera" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "silent" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,591,372 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "gera" and "silent" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs silent". 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 #1,591,372 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