maidenvsmeinenWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#42,670
“maiden” frequency rank
#280
“meinen” frequency rank
42950
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maiden meinen
Definition die Maid, die Magd einen bestimmten Standpunkt oder eine bestimmte Meinung vertreten

Letter map: maiden vs meinen

Shared letters muted; letters that set maiden and meinen apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. maiden and meinen follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
maiden
6 ch
meinen

Role in the sentence - maiden and meinen

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maiden is anoun and meinenaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42950, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maiden is recorded at frequency rank #42,670, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. meinen is at rank #280, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈmaɪ̯nən].

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 42950, this pair ranks #1,433,294 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maiden vs meinen

Shared letters: eimn. Private to "maiden": ad. Private to "meinen": -.

"maiden" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "meinen" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maiden ← amiden · madien · maidden · maidenn · maidne · maiedn · miaden · mmaiden
  • meinen ← eminen · meienn · meinenn · meinnen · menien · mienen · mmeinen

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maiden" for "meinen" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maiden" is a noun and "meinen" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "maiden" or "meinen" show up more?
"meinen" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #280 in our German list, against #42,670 for "maiden". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "maiden" and "meinen". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maiden" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meinen" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,433,294 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maiden" and "meinen" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "maiden 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 #1,433,294 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