livevslobeTell them apart

Quick tell: live is a adjective, lobe is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“live” is an adjective and “lobe” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,015
“live” frequency rank
#32,155
“lobe” frequency rank
33170
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature live lobe
Definition direkt ohne Veränderungen und Verzögerungen (an ein Publikum) wiedergebend 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs loben

Where the eye mixes live and lobe

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
live
4 ch
lobe

Visual trap between live and lobe

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: live is [laɪ̯f] while lobe is [ˈloːbə]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33170, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

live is recorded at frequency rank #1,015, classified as anadj, pronounced [laɪ̯f]. lobe is at rank #32,155, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈloːbə].

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 33170, this pair ranks #1,691,771 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of live vs lobe

Shared letters: el. Private to "live": iv. Private to "lobe": bo.

"live" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "lobe" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • liveilve · liev · livve · llive · lvie
  • lobelboe · llobe · lobbe · loeb · olbe

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "live" and "lobe" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "live" is an adjective and "lobe" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "live" or "lobe" show up more?
"live" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,015 in our German list, against #32,155 for "lobe". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "live" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "lobe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,691,771 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "live" and "lobe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lame vs lobe". 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 #1,691,771 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