greatvsguestConfusable pair

Quick tell: great is a adjective, guest is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“great” is an adjective and “guest” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#8,381
“great” frequency rank
#38,160
“guest” frequency rank
46541
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature great guest
Definition sehr groß Gast

Letter map: great vs guest

Shared letters muted; letters that set great and guest apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
great
5 ch
guest

Grammar separator: great vs guest

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: great is anadjective and guestanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46541, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

great is recorded at frequency rank #8,381, classified as anadj, pronounced [ɡɹeɪt]. guest is at rank #38,160, 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 46541, this pair ranks #1,315,515 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of great vs guest

Shared letters: egt. Private to "great": ar. Private to "guest": su.

"great" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC  ·  "guest" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • greatgerat · ggreat · graet · greatt · greta · grreat · rgeat
  • guestgeust · gguest · guesst · guestt · guset · ugest

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "great" and "guest" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "great" is an adjective and "guest" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "great" or "guest" show up more?
"great" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,381 in our German list, against #38,160 for "guest". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "great" vs "guest" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "great" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guest" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,315,515 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "great" and "guest" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guest 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 #1,315,515 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