meidenvsmeinenTell them apart

Which to use

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

#11,482
“meiden” frequency rank
#280
“meinen” frequency rank
11762
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature meiden meinen
Definition etwas dafür tun, einer Person oder Sache nicht zu begegnen einen bestimmten Standpunkt oder eine bestimmte Meinung vertreten

Where the eye mixes meiden and meinen

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 5 letters in sequence. meiden and meinen follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
meiden
6 ch
meinen

Visual trap between meiden and meinen

A purely visual mix-up. meiden ([ˈmaɪ̯dn̩]) and meinen ([ˈmaɪ̯nən]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - d in “meiden” becomes n in “meinen”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11762, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

meiden is recorded at frequency rank #11,482, classified as averb, pronounced [ˈmaɪ̯dn̩]. meinen is at rank #280, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈmaɪ̯nən].

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 11762, this pair ranks #1,968,049 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of meiden vs meinen

Shared letters: eimn. Private to "meiden": d. Private to "meinen": -.

"meiden" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "meinen" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • meidenemiden · meidden · meidenn · meidne · meiedn · mieden · mmeiden
  • meineneminen · meienn · meinenn · meinnen · menien · mienen · mmeinen

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "meiden" and "meinen" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently ([ˈmaɪ̯dn̩] versus [ˈmaɪ̯nən]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
In ordinary German text, does "meiden" or "meinen" show up more?
"meinen" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #280 in our German list, against #11,482 for "meiden". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "meiden" and "meinen" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "meiden" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "meinen" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,968,049 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "meiden" and "meinen" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "mailen vs meiden". 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 #1,968,049 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