givenvsgutenWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#48,187
“given” frequency rank
#330
“guten” frequency rank
48517
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature given guten
Definition Partizip Perfekt (past participle) des Verbs give Genitiv Singular Maskulinum der starken Flexion des Adjektivs gut

Letter map: given vs guten

Shared letters muted; letters that set given and guten apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. given and guten follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
given
5 ch
guten

Grammar separator: given vs guten

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: given is averb and gutenanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48517, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

given is recorded at frequency rank #48,187, classified as averb, pronounced […]. guten is at rank #330, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈɡuːtn̩].

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 48517, this pair ranks #1,245,662 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of given vs guten

Shared letters: egn. Private to "given": iv. Private to "guten": tu.

"given" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "guten" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • givenggiven · gievn · givenn · givne · givven · gvien · igven
  • gutengguten · gtuen · guetn · gutenn · gutne · gutten · ugten

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "given" and "guten" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "given" is a verb and "guten" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "given" or "guten" show up more?
"guten" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #330 in our German list, against #48,187 for "given". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "given" and "guten".

  • Full dictionary entry for "given" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guten" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,245,662 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "given" and "guten" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "given 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 #1,245,662 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