marksvsterraWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: marks is a verb, terra is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#25,230
“marks” frequency rank
#16,564
“terra” frequency rank
41794
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marks terra
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs mark Erd-

Letter map: marks vs terra

Shared letters muted; letters that set marks and terra apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. marks (CVCCC) and terra (CVCCV) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
marks
5 ch
terra

Part-of-speech tell for marks / terra

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: marks is averb and terraanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 4 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41794, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marks is recorded at frequency rank #25,230, classified as averb, pronounced […]. terra is at rank #16,564, tagged as anadj, 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 41794, this pair ranks #1,468,865 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of marks vs terra

Shared letters: ar. Private to "marks": kms. Private to "terra": et.

"marks" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "terra" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marksamrks · makrs · markks · markss · marrks · marsk · mmarks · mraks
  • terraetrra · tera · terar · trera · tterra

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "marks" and "terra" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marks" is a verb and "terra" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "marks" or "terra" show up more?
"terra" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #16,564 in our German list, against #25,230 for "marks". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "marks" and "terra". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marks" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "terra" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,468,865 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marks" and "terra" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marks 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 #1,468,865 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