officevsöffneTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#5,205
“office” frequency rank
#13,081
“öffne” frequency rank
18286
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature office öffne
Definition Arbeitsraum für Verwaltung und Planung: Büro 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs öffnen

Letter map: office vs öffne

Shared letters muted; letters that set office and öffne apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. office runs 6 letters (VCCVCV) against öffne's 5 (VCCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
office
5 ch
öffne

Part-of-speech tell for office / öffne

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: office is anoun and öffneaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18286, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

office is recorded at frequency rank #5,205, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. öffne is at rank #13,081, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈœfnə].

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 18286, this pair ranks #1,919,673 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of office vs öffne

Shared letters: ef. Private to "office": cio. Private to "öffne": nö.

"office" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCV  ·  "öffne" · 5 letters · shape VCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • office ← fofice · offcie · officce · offiec · ofice · ofifce

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "office" for "öffne" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "office" is a noun and "öffne" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "office" or "öffne" show up more?
"office" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,205 in our German list, against #13,081 for "öffne". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "office" vs "öffne" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "office" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "öffne" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,919,673 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "office" and "öffne" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "öffne vs ordne". 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 #1,919,673 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