nosvsnotesConfusable pair

Quick tell: nos is a pronoun, notes is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“nos” is a pronoun and “notes” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,872
“nos” frequency rank
#21,718
“notes” frequency rank
49590
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature nos notes
Definition für die 1. Person, Plural, Nominativ (Subjektfall); wir 2. Person Singular Präsens Konjunktiv des Verbs notar

Letter map: nos vs notes

Shared letters muted; letters that set nos and notes apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch
nos
5 ch
notes

Part-of-speech tell for nos / notes

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: nos is apronoun and notesaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49590, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

nos is recorded at frequency rank #27,872, classified as apron, pronounced […]. notes is at rank #21,718, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈnɔ.tɪs].

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 49590, this pair ranks #1,205,711 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of nos vs notes

Shared letters: nos. Private to "nos": -. Private to "notes": et.

"nos" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "notes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • notesnnotes · noets · notess · notse · nottes · ntoes · ontes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "nos" and "notes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "nos" is a pronoun and "notes" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "nos" or "notes" show up more?
"notes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,718 in our German list, against #27,872 for "nos". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "nos" and "notes".

  • Full dictionary entry for "nos" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "notes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,205,711 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "nos" and "notes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "nos 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 #1,205,711 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