haldevsHilfeWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“halde” and “Hilfe” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#39,984
“halde” frequency rank
#490
“Hilfe” frequency rank
40474
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature halde Hilfe
Definition Abraumhalde aktive Unterstützung

Letter map: halde vs Hilfe

Shared letters muted; letters that set halde and Hilfe apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. halde and Hilfe follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
halde
5 ch
Hilfe

Corpus notes: halde and Hilfe

halde and Hilfe are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40474, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

halde is recorded at frequency rank #39,984, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. Hilfe is at rank #490, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈhɪlfə].

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 40474, this pair ranks #1,507,432 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of halde vs Hilfe

Shared letters: ehl. Private to "halde": ad. Private to "Hilfe": fi.

"halde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "Hilfe" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • halde ← ahlde · hadle · haldde · haled · hallde · hhalde · hlade
  • Hilfe ← hhilfe · hifle · hilef · hilffe · hillfe · hlife · ihlfe

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "halde" for "Hilfe" ever safe?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary German text, does "halde" or "Hilfe" show up more?
"Hilfe" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #490 in our German list, against #39,984 for "halde". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "halde" vs "Hilfe" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "halde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Hilfe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,507,432 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "halde" and "Hilfe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "halde 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 #1,507,432 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