legte vs lite, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“legte” is a verb and “lite” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,977
“legte” frequency rank: #27,828
“lite” frequency rank: 29805
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	legte	lite
Definition	1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs legen	der Streit, der Zank

Letter map: legte vs lite

Shared letters muted; letters that set legte and lite apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch

legte

4 ch

lite

Part-of-speech tell for legte / lite

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: legte is averb and liteanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29805, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

legte is recorded at frequency rank #1,977, classified as averb, pronounced [ˈleːktə]. lite is at rank #27,828, 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 29805, this pair ranks #1,759,970 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of legte vs lite

Shared letters: elt. Private to "legte": g. Private to "lite": i.

"legte" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV · "lite" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

legte ← elgte · leget · leggte · legtte · letge · lgete · llegte
lite ← ilte · liet · litte · llite · ltie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "legte" and "lite" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "legte" is a verb and "lite" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "legte" or "lite" show up more?

"legte" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,977 in our German list, against #27,828 for "lite". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "legte" and "lite".

Full dictionary entry for "legte" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lite" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,759,970 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"legte" and "lite" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lite 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 #1,759,970 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.