murdervstheirWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: murder is a noun, their is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“murder” is a noun and “their” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,860
“murder” frequency rank
#11,131
“their” frequency rank
57991
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature murder their
Definition Mord, Ermordung ihr

Letter map: murder vs their

Shared letters muted; letters that set murder and their apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. murder runs 6 letters (CVCCVC) against their's 5 (CCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
murder
5 ch
their

Part-of-speech tell for murder / their

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: murder is anoun and theirapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57991, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

murder is recorded at frequency rank #46,860, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. their is at rank #11,131, tagged as apron, 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 57991, this pair ranks #879,849 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of murder vs their

Shared letters: er. Private to "murder": dmu. Private to "their": hit.

"murder" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "their" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • murder ← mmurder · mruder · mudrer · murdder · murderr · murdre · muredr · murrder
  • their ← hteir · tehir · theirr · theri · thheir · thier · ttheir

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "murder" and "their" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "murder" is a noun and "their" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "murder" or "their" show up more?
"their" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,131 in our German list, against #46,860 for "murder". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "murder" vs "their" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "murder" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "their" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #879,849 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "murder" and "their" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "murder 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 #879,849 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