movingvspaterWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#42,011
“moving” frequency rank
#8,439
“pater” frequency rank
50450
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature moving pater
Definition Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs move der Vater

Letter map: moving vs pater

Shared letters muted; letters that set moving and pater apart highlighted. No shared letter run. moving runs 6 letters (CVCVCC) against pater's 5 (CVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
moving
5 ch
pater

Role in the sentence - moving and pater

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: moving is averb and pateranoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50450, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

moving is recorded at frequency rank #42,011, classified as averb, pronounced […]. pater is at rank #8,439, 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 50450, this pair ranks #1,173,215 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of moving vs pater

Shared letters: none. Private to "moving": gimnov. Private to "pater": aeprt.

"moving" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC  ·  "pater" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • movingmmoving · moivng · movign · movingg · movinng · movnig · movving · mvoing
  • paterapter · paetr · paterr · patre · patter · ppater · ptaer

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "moving" for "pater" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "moving" is a verb and "pater" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "moving" or "pater" show up more?
"pater" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,439 in our German list, against #42,011 for "moving". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "moving" and "pater". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "moving" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pater" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,173,215 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "moving" and "pater" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "moving 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 #1,173,215 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