medicinevspieceWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“medicine” and “piece” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#32,667
“medicine” frequency rank
#24,871
“piece” frequency rank
57538
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature medicine piece
Definition Medizin Teil, Stück

Letter map: medicine vs piece

Shared letters muted; letters that set medicine and piece apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. medicine runs 8 letters (CVCVCVCV) against piece's 5 (CVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

8 ch
medicine
5 ch
piece

Corpus notes: medicine and piece

medicine and piece are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57538, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

medicine is recorded at frequency rank #32,667, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. piece is at rank #24,871, tagged as anoun, 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 57538, this pair ranks #897,579 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of medicine vs piece

Shared letters: cei. Private to "medicine": dmn. Private to "piece": p.

"medicine" · 8 letters · shape CVCVCVCV  ·  "piece" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • medicine ← emdicine · mdeicine · medciine · meddicine · mediccine · medicien · medicinne · medicnie
  • piece ← ipece · peice · picee · piecce · pieec · ppiece

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "medicine" and "piece" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 3 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary German text, does "medicine" or "piece" show up more?
"piece" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,871 in our German list, against #32,667 for "medicine". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "medicine" vs "piece" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "medicine" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "piece" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #897,579 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "medicine" and "piece" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "medicine 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 #897,579 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