hocvsplantsTell them apart

Quick tell: hoc is a unknown, plants is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hoc” is an unknown and “plants” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,937
“hoc” frequency rank
#49,962
“plants” frequency rank
67899
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hoc plants
Definition Nominativ Singular Neutrum des Pronomens hic Plural des Substantivs plant

Letter map: hoc vs plants

Shared letters muted; letters that set hoc and plants apart highlighted. No shared letter run. hoc runs 3 letters (CVC) against plants's 6 (CCVCCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
hoc
6 ch
plants

Role in the sentence - hoc and plants

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hoc is anunknown and plantsanoun. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 67899, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hoc is recorded at frequency rank #17,937, classified as anunknown, pronounced […]. plants is at rank #49,962, 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 67899, this pair ranks #525,106 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hoc vs plants

Shared letters: none. Private to "hoc": cho. Private to "plants": alnpst.

"hoc" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "plants" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • plants ← lpants · palnts · plannts · plantss · plantts · platns · pllants · plnats

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "hoc" for "plants" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hoc" is an unknown and "plants" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "hoc" or "plants" show up more?
"hoc" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,937 in our German list, against #49,962 for "plants". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "hoc" vs "plants" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hoc" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "plants" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #525,106 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hoc" and "plants" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "plants 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 #525,106 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