missing vs open, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#43,357
“missing” frequency rank: #2,607
“open” frequency rank: 45964
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	missing	open
Definition	Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs miss	etwas ist nicht geschlossen

Letter map: missing vs open

Shared letters muted; letters that set missing and open apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

7 ch

missing

4 ch

open

Part-of-speech tell for missing / open

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: missing is averb and openanadjective. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45964, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

missing is recorded at frequency rank #43,357, classified as averb, pronounced […]. open is at rank #2,607, 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 45964, this pair ranks #1,335,200 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of missing vs open

Shared letters: n. Private to "missing": gims. Private to "open": eop.

"missing" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC · "open" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

missing ← imssing · mising · misisng · missign · missingg · missinng · missnig · mißing
open ← oepn · openn · opne · oppen · poen

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "missing" and "open" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "missing" is a verb and "open" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "missing" or "open" show up more?

"open" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,607 in our German list, against #43,357 for "missing". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "missing" and "open". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "missing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "open" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,335,200 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"missing" and "open" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "missing 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 #1,335,200 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.