halbvsharmTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#1,849
“halb” frequency rank
#46,723
“harm” frequency rank
48572
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature halb harm
Definition geteilt durch zwei; die Hälfte von etwas seiend; zu 50 Prozent körperlicher oder geistiger Schaden

Letter map: halb vs harm

Shared letters muted; letters that set halb and harm apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
halb
4 ch
harm

Part-of-speech tell for halb / harm

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: halb is anadjective and harmanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48572, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

halb is recorded at frequency rank #1,849, classified as anadj, pronounced [halp]. harm is at rank #46,723, 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 48572, this pair ranks #1,243,539 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of halb vs harm

Shared letters: ah. Private to "halb": bl. Private to "harm": mr.

"halb" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "harm" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • halbahlb · habl · halbb · hallb · hhalb · hlab
  • harmahrm · hamr · harmm · harrm · hharm · hram

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "halb" and "harm" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "halb" is an adjective and "harm" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "halb" or "harm"?
"halb" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,849 in our German list, against #46,723 for "harm". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "halb" vs "harm" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "halb" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "harm" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,243,539 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "halb" and "harm" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "harm 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 #1,243,539 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