maidenvswhichTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#42,670
“maiden” frequency rank
#12,204
“which” frequency rank
54874
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature maiden which
Definition die Maid, die Magd welche?

Letter map: maiden vs which

Shared letters muted; letters that set maiden and which apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. maiden runs 6 letters (CVVCVC) against which's 5 (CCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
maiden
5 ch
which

Role in the sentence - maiden and which

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: maiden is anoun and whichapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 54874, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

maiden is recorded at frequency rank #42,670, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. which is at rank #12,204, tagged as apron, 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 54874, this pair ranks #1,001,607 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of maiden vs which

Shared letters: i. Private to "maiden": ademn. Private to "which": chw.

"maiden" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "which" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • maidenamiden · madien · maidden · maidenn · maidne · maiedn · miaden · mmaiden
  • whichhwich · whcih · whhich · whicch · whichh · whihc · wihch · wwhich

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "maiden" for "which" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "maiden" is a noun and "which" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "maiden" vs "which" - which ranks higher?
"which" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,204 in our German list, against #42,670 for "maiden". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "maiden" vs "which" 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 "which" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,001,607 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "maiden" and "which" 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 #1,001,607 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