nightvsnimmtTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#4,821
“night” frequency rank
#602
“nimmt” frequency rank
5423
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature night nimmt
Definition Nacht 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs nehmen

Where the eye mixes night and nimmt

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. night and nimmt follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
night
5 ch
nimmt

Look-alike desk: night vs nimmt

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: night is [naɪt] while nimmt is [nɪmt]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 5423, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

night is recorded at frequency rank #4,821, classified as anoun, pronounced [naɪt]. nimmt is at rank #602, tagged as averb, pronounced [nɪmt].

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 5423, this pair ranks #1,994,798 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of night vs nimmt

Shared letters: int. Private to "night": gh. Private to "nimmt": m.

"night" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "nimmt" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • night ← inght · ngiht · nigght · nighht · nightt · nigth · nihgt · nnight
  • nimmt ← inmmt · nimmtt · nimt · nimtm · nmimt · nnimmt

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "night" and "nimmt" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "night" is a noun and "nimmt" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "night" or "nimmt" show up more?
"nimmt" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #602 in our German list, against #4,821 for "night". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "night" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "nimmt" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,994,798 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "night" and "nimmt" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nagt vs night". 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 #1,994,798 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