maidenvswarsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#42,670
“maiden” frequency rank
#3,861
“wars” frequency rank
46531
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maiden wars
Definition die Maid, die Magd 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs war

Letter map: maiden vs wars

Shared letters muted; letters that set maiden and wars apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. maiden runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against wars's 4 (CVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
maiden
4 ch
wars

Role in the sentence - maiden and wars

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maiden is anoun and warsaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46531, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maiden is recorded at frequency rank #42,670, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. wars is at rank #3,861, tagged as averb, 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 46531, this pair ranks #1,315,854 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maiden vs wars

Shared letters: a. Private to "maiden": deimn. Private to "wars": rsw.

"maiden" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "wars" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maidenamiden · madien · maidden · maidenn · maidne · maiedn · miaden · mmaiden
  • warsawrs · warrs · warss · wasr · wras · wwars

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maiden" for "wars" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maiden" is a noun and "wars" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "maiden" or "wars" show up more?
"wars" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,861 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.

After this comparison

Pair "maiden" vs "wars" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "maiden" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wars" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,315,854 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maiden" and "wars" 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 #1,315,854 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