marksvsunsernWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: marks is a verb, unsern is a determiner, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#25,230
“marks” frequency rank
#24,966
“unsern” frequency rank
50196
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marks unsern
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs mark Akkusativ Singular Maskulinum attributiv des Pronomens unser

Letter map: marks vs unsern

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

5 ch
marks
6 ch
unsern

Part-of-speech tell for marks / unsern

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: marks is averb and unsernadeterminer. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50196, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marks is recorded at frequency rank #25,230, classified as averb, pronounced […]. unsern is at rank #24,966, tagged as adet, 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 50196, this pair ranks #1,182,946 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of marks vs unsern

Shared letters: rs. Private to "marks": akm. Private to "unsern": enu.

"marks" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "unsern" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marksamrks · makrs · markks · markss · marrks · marsk · mmarks · mraks
  • unsernnusern · unesrn · unnsern · unsenr · unsernn · unserrn · unsren · unssern

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "marks" for "unsern" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marks" is a verb and "unsern" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "marks" vs "unsern" - which ranks higher?
"unsern" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,966 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.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "marks" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "unsern" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,182,946 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marks" and "unsern" 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 #1,182,946 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