gutvsgutsWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#89
“gut” frequency rank
#30,595
“guts” frequency rank
30684
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature gut guts
Definition vom Menschen her positiv bewertet, empfunden, gefühlt und dergleichen Plural des Substantivs gut

Letter map: gut vs guts

Shared letters muted; letters that set gut and guts apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
gut
4 ch
guts

Role in the sentence - gut and guts

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: gut is anadjective and gutsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “gut” sits inside “guts”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30684, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

gut is recorded at frequency rank #89, classified as anadj, pronounced [ɡuːt]. guts is at rank #30,595, 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 30684, this pair ranks #1,743,061 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of gut vs guts

Shared letters: gtu. Private to "gut": -. Private to "guts": s.

"gut" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "guts" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • gutsgguts · gtus · gust · gutss · gutts · ugts

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "gut" for "guts" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "gut" is an adjective and "guts" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "gut" or "guts" show up more?
"gut" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #89 in our German list, against #30,595 for "guts". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "gut" vs "guts" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "gut" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "guts" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,743,061 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "gut" and "guts" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "guts 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 #1,743,061 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