nearvsnurTell them apart

Quick tell: near is a adjective, nur is a particle, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“near” is an adjective and “nur” is a particle - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#33,730
“near” frequency rank
#40
“nur” frequency rank
33770
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature near nur
Definition nahe generell: unterstreicht die Betonung oder Einschränkung der Satzteilaussage

Letter map: near vs nur

Shared letters muted; letters that set near and nur apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
near
3 ch
nur

Part-of-speech tell for near / nur

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: near is anadjective and nuraparticle. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33770, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

near is recorded at frequency rank #33,730, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. nur is at rank #40, tagged as aparticle, pronounced [nuːɐ̯].

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 33770, this pair ranks #1,678,497 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of near vs nur

Shared letters: nr. Private to "near": ae. Private to "nur": u.

"near" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "nur" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • nearenar · naer · nearr · nera · nnear

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "near" and "nur" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "near" is an adjective and "nur" a particle, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "near" vs "nur" - which ranks higher?
"nur" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40 in our German list, against #33,730 for "near". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "near" and "nur".

  • Full dictionary entry for "near" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,678,497 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "near" and "nur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "near 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 #1,678,497 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