gutenvsgutsConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#330
“guten” frequency rank
#30,595
“guts” frequency rank
30925
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature guten guts
Definition Genitiv Singular Maskulinum der starken Flexion des Adjektivs gut Plural des Substantivs gut

Letter map: guten vs guts

Shared letters muted; letters that set guten and guts apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. guten runs 5 letters (CVCVC) against guts's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
guten
4 ch
guts

Part-of-speech tell for guten / guts

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: guten is anadjective and gutsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30925, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

guten is recorded at frequency rank #330, classified as anadj, pronounced [ˈɡuːtn̩]. 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 30925, this pair ranks #1,738,317 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of guten vs guts

Shared letters: gtu. Private to "guten": en. Private to "guts": s.

"guten" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "guts" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • guten ← gguten · gtuen · guetn · gutenn · gutne · gutten · ugten
  • guts ← gguts · gtus · gust · gutss · gutts · ugts

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "guten" for "guts" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "guten" is an adjective and "guts" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "guten" or "guts"?
"guten" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #330 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.

Useful next steps

You've compared "guten" and "guts". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "guten" 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 #1,738,317 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "guten" 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 #1,738,317 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