haldevsholdenConfusable pair

Quick tell: halde is a noun, holden is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#39,984
“halde” frequency rank
#27,353
“holden” frequency rank
67337
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature halde holden
Definition Abraumhalde Genitiv Singular Maskulinum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs hold

Letter map: halde vs holden

Shared letters muted; letters that set halde and holden apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. halde runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against holden's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
halde
6 ch
holden

Role in the sentence - halde and holden

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: halde is anoun and holdenanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67337, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

halde is recorded at frequency rank #39,984, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. holden is at rank #27,353, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈhɔldn̩].

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 67337, this pair ranks #543,451 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of halde vs holden

Shared letters: dehl. Private to "halde": a. Private to "holden": no.

"halde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "holden" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • halde ← ahlde · hadle · haldde · haled · hallde · hhalde · hlade
  • holden ← hholden · hloden · hodlen · holdden · holdenn · holdne · holedn · hollden

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "halde" for "holden" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "halde" is a noun and "holden" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "halde" or "holden" show up more?
"holden" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,353 in our German list, against #39,984 for "halde". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "halde" and "holden".

  • Full dictionary entry for "halde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "holden" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #543,451 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "halde" and "holden" 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 #543,451 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