leervsLrTell them apart

Quick tell: leer is a adjective, Lr is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“leer” is an adjective and “Lr” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,116
“leer” frequency rank
#23,611
“Lr” frequency rank
25727
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature leer Lr
Definition (fast) ohne (physischen) Inhalt Lawrencium

Letter map: leer vs Lr

Shared letters muted; letters that set leer and Lr apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
leer
2 ch
Lr

Part-of-speech tell for leer / Lr

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: leer is anadjective and Lranabbrev. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25727, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

leer is recorded at frequency rank #2,116, classified as anadj, pronounced [leːɐ̯]. Lr is at rank #23,611, tagged as anabbrev.

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 25727, this pair ranks #1,828,887 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of leer vs Lr

Shared letters: lr. Private to "leer": e. Private to "Lr": -.

"leer" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "Lr" · 2 letters · shape CC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • leereler · leerr · ler · lere · lleer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "leer" for "Lr" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "leer" is an adjective and "Lr" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "leer" or "Lr" show up more?
"leer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,116 in our German list, against #23,611 for "Lr". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "leer" and "Lr".

  • Full dictionary entry for "leer" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Lr" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,828,887 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "leer" and "Lr" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Lori vs Lr". 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 #1,828,887 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