holavsholenTell them apart

Quick tell: hola is a phrase, holen is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“hola” is a phrase and “holen” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,229
“hola” frequency rank
#1,328
“holen” frequency rank
49557
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature hola holen
Definition hallo etwas oder jemanden herbeischaffen

Letter map: hola vs holen

Shared letters muted; letters that set hola and holen apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. hola runs 4 letters (CVCV) against holen's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
hola
5 ch
holen

Part-of-speech tell for hola / holen

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: hola is aphrase and holenaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49557, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

hola is recorded at frequency rank #48,229, classified as aphrase, pronounced […]. holen is at rank #1,328, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈhoːlən].

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 49557, this pair ranks #1,206,996 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of hola vs holen

Shared letters: hlo. Private to "hola": a. Private to "holen": en.

"hola" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "holen" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • hola ← hhola · hloa · hoal · holla · ohla
  • holen ← hholen · hloen · hoeln · holenn · hollen · holne · ohlen

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "hola" and "holen" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "hola" is a phrase and "holen" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "hola" or "holen"?
"holen" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,328 in our German list, against #48,229 for "hola". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "hola" vs "holen" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "hola" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "holen" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,206,996 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "hola" and "holen" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "hola 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 #1,206,996 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