martenvsmattesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: marten is a noun, mattes is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“marten” is a noun and “mattes” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,341
“marten” frequency rank
#38,895
“mattes” frequency rank
82236
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature marten mattes
Definition der Marder Nominativ Singular Neutrum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs matt

Letter map: marten vs mattes

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

6 ch
marten
6 ch
mattes

Role in the sentence - marten and mattes

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: marten is anoun and mattesanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 82236, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

marten is recorded at frequency rank #43,341, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. mattes is at rank #38,895, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈmatəs].

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 82236, this pair ranks #160,874 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of marten vs mattes

Shared letters: aemt. Private to "marten": nr. Private to "mattes": s.

"marten" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "mattes" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • marten ← amrten · maretn · marrten · martenn · martne · martten · matren · mmarten
  • mattes ← matets · mattess · mattse · mmattes · mtates

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "marten" and "mattes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "marten" is a noun and "mattes" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "marten" or "mattes" show up more?
"mattes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,895 in our German list, against #43,341 for "marten". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "marten" vs "mattes" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "marten" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "mattes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #160,874 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "marten" and "mattes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "marten 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 #160,874 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