lohvsloveTell them apart

Quick tell: loh is a verb, love is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#44,776
“loh” frequency rank
#2,844
“love” frequency rank
47620
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature loh love
Definition 2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs lohen innige Zuneigung für jemanden oder etwas; Liebe

Where the eye mixes loh and love

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. loh runs 3 letters (CVC) against love's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
loh
4 ch
love

Look-alike desk: loh vs love

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: loh is [loː] while love is [lʌv]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47620, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

loh is recorded at frequency rank #44,776, classified as averb, pronounced [loː]. love is at rank #2,844, tagged as anoun, pronounced [lʌv].

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 47620, this pair ranks #1,277,956 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of loh vs love

Shared letters: lo. Private to "loh": h. Private to "love": ev.

"loh" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "love" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • love ← llove · loev · lovve · lvoe · olve

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "loh" for "love" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "loh" is a verb and "love" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "loh" or "love" show up more?
"love" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,844 in our German list, against #44,776 for "loh". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "loh" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "love" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,277,956 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "loh" and "love" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "loh vs Lori". 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 #1,277,956 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