NevsneckConfusable pair

Quick tell: Ne is a abbrev, neck is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Ne” is an abbrev and “neck” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#322
“Ne” frequency rank
#45,472
“neck” frequency rank
45794
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Ne neck
Definition Neon 2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs necken

Letter map: Ne vs neck

Shared letters muted; letters that set Ne and neck apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
Ne
4 ch
neck

Part-of-speech tell for Ne / neck

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Ne is anabbrev and neckaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “Ne” sits inside “neck”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45794, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Ne is recorded at frequency rank #322, classified as anabbrev. neck is at rank #45,472, tagged as averb, pronounced [nɛk].

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 45794, this pair ranks #1,341,019 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Ne vs neck

Shared letters: en. Private to "Ne": -. Private to "neck": ck.

"Ne" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "neck" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • neckenck · ncek · necck · neckk · nekc · nneck

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Ne" and "neck" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Ne" is an abbrev and "neck" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Ne" vs "neck" - which ranks higher?
"Ne" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #322 in our German list, against #45,472 for "neck". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "Ne" and "neck". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Ne" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "neck" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,341,019 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Ne" and "neck" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "neck vs nei". 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 #1,341,019 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