missingvssquareWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: missing is a verb, square is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#43,357
“missing” frequency rank
#13,702
“square” frequency rank
57059
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature missing square
Definition Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs miss Quadrat

Letter map: missing vs square

Shared letters muted; letters that set missing and square apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. missing runs 7 letters (CVCCVCC) against square's 6 (CCVVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
missing
6 ch
square

Part-of-speech tell for missing / square

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: missing is averb and squareanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57059, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

missing is recorded at frequency rank #43,357, classified as averb, pronounced […]. square is at rank #13,702, 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 57059, this pair ranks #916,145 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of missing vs square

Shared letters: s. Private to "missing": gimn. Private to "square": aeqru.

"missing" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC  ·  "square" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • missing ← imssing · mising · misisng · missign · missingg · missinng · missnig · mißing
  • square ← qsuare · sqaure · sqquare · squaer · squarre · squrae · ssquare · suqare

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "missing" and "square" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "missing" is a verb and "square" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "missing" or "square" show up more?
"square" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,702 in our German list, against #43,357 for "missing". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "missing" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "square" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #916,145 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "missing" and "square" 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 #916,145 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