Which to use
“Greis” is a noun and “gries” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #39,401
- “Greis” frequency rank
- #47,460
- “gries” frequency rank
- 86861
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Greis | gries |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | sehr alter Mensch, meist Mann | grau, grauhaarig oder trübe beim Wetter |
Where the eye mixes Greis and gries
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. Greis and gries follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: Greis vs gries
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Greis is [ɡʁaɪ̯s] while gries is [ɡʁiːs]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (ei ↔ ie) - a transposition the eye reads straight past, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 86861, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
Greis is recorded at frequency rank #39,401, classified as anoun, pronounced [ɡʁaɪ̯s]. gries is at rank #47,460, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ɡʁiːs].
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 86861, this pair ranks #87,984 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of Greis vs gries
Shared letters: egirs. Private to "Greis": -. Private to "gries": -.
"Greis" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC · "gries" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "Greis" and "gries" be used interchangeably?
In ordinary German text, does "Greis" or "gries" show up more?
Useful next steps
Eye-level mix-up between "Greis" and "gries" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.
- Full dictionary entry for "Greis" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "gries" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #87,984 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "Greis" and "gries" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "gries vs Grimms". 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 #87,984 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.