hagervsHaremWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#29,164
“hager” frequency rank
#40,585
“Harem” frequency rank
69749
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hager Harem
Definition dürr, mager, sehnig, knochig (und häufig groß gewachsen) von den Männern abgegrenzter Wohnbereich für Frauen in einem Haus

Where the eye mixes hager and Harem

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. hager and Harem follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
hager
5 ch
Harem

Look-alike desk: hager vs Harem

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hager is [ˈhaːɡɐ] while Harem is [ˈhaːʁɛm]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69749, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hager is recorded at frequency rank #29,164, classified as anadj, pronounced [ˈhaːɡɐ]. Harem is at rank #40,585, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈhaːʁɛm].

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 69749, this pair ranks #467,087 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of hager vs Harem

Shared letters: aehr. Private to "hager": g. Private to "Harem": m.

"hager" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "Harem" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hager ← ahger · haegr · hagerr · hagger · hagre · hgaer · hhager
  • Harem ← ahrem · haerm · haremm · harme · harrem · hharem · hraem

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "hager" for "Harem" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hager" is an adjective and "Harem" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "hager" or "Harem"?
"hager" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,164 in our German list, against #40,585 for "Harem". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hager" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Harem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #467,087 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hager" and "Harem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Harem vs haze". 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 #467,087 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