hintervshintereWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: hinter is a preposition, hintere is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hinter” is a preposition and “hintere” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#410
“hinter” frequency rank
#13,861
“hintere” frequency rank
14271
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hinter hintere
Definition in Richtung der Rückseite von etwas entfernt Nominativ Singular Femininum Positiv der starken Flexion des Adjektivs hinter

Where the eye mixes hinter and hintere

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 6 letters in sequence.

6 ch
hinter
7 ch
hintere

Look-alike desk: hinter vs hintere

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: hinter is [ˈhɪntɐ] while hintere is [ˈhɪntəʁə]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “hinter” sits inside “hintere”, and the parts of speech differ too (preposition vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 14271, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hinter is recorded at frequency rank #410, classified as aprep, pronounced [ˈhɪntɐ]. hintere is at rank #13,861, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈhɪntəʁə].

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 14271, this pair ranks #1,952,382 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of hinter vs hintere

Shared letters: ehinrt. Private to "hinter": -. Private to "hintere": -.

"hinter" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "hintere" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hinterhhinter · hinetr · hinnter · hinterr · hintre · hintter · hitner · hniter
  • hinterehhintere · hinetre · hinntere · hinteer · hinterre · hintree · hinttere · hitnere

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hinter" and "hintere" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hinter" is a preposition and "hintere" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "hinter" or "hintere" show up more?
"hinter" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #410 in our German list, against #13,861 for "hintere". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "hinter" and "hintere" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hinter" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "hintere" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,952,382 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hinter" and "hintere" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hinderte vs hintere". 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 #1,952,382 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