LeibesvsliebesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Leibes is a noun, liebes is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Leibes” is a noun and “liebes” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,301
“Leibes” frequency rank
#5,619
“liebes” frequency rank
53920
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Leibes liebes
Definition Genitiv Singular des Substantivs Leib Nominativ Singular Neutrum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs lieb

Where the eye mixes Leibes and liebes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. Leibes and liebes follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
Leibes
6 ch
liebes

Look-alike desk: Leibes vs liebes

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Leibes is [ˈlaɪ̯bəs] while liebes is [ˈliːbəs]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ only by swapping two adjacent letters (ei ↔ ie) - a transposition the eye reads straight past, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53920, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Leibes is recorded at frequency rank #48,301, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈlaɪ̯bəs]. liebes is at rank #5,619, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈliːbəs].

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 53920, this pair ranks #1,039,142 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Leibes vs liebes

Shared letters: beils. Private to "Leibes": -. Private to "liebes": -.

"Leibes" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "liebes" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Leibeselibes · lebies · leibbes · leibess · leibse · leiebs · lleibes
  • liebesilebes · libees · liebbes · liebess · liebse · lieebs · lliebes

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "Leibes" and "liebes" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Leibes" is a noun and "liebes" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Leibes" or "liebes" show up more?
"liebes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,619 in our German list, against #48,301 for "Leibes". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Leibes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "liebes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,039,142 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Leibes" and "liebes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Lees vs Leibes". 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 #1,039,142 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