officialvssinglesTell them apart

Quick tell: official is a adjective, singles is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“official” is an adjective and “singles” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#20,689
“official” frequency rank
#3,773
“singles” frequency rank
24462
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature official singles
Definition offiziell 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs single

Letter map: official vs singles

Shared letters muted; letters that set official and singles apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

8 ch
official
7 ch
singles

Role in the sentence - official and singles

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: official is anadjective and singlesaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24462, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

official is recorded at frequency rank #20,689, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. singles is at rank #3,773, tagged as averb, pronounced […].

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 24462, this pair ranks #1,847,275 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of official vs singles

Shared letters: il. Private to "official": acfo. Private to "singles": egns.

"official" · 8 letters · shape VCCVCVVC  ·  "singles" · 7 letters · shape CVCCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • officialfoficial · offciial · officail · officcial · officiall · officila · offiical · oficial
  • singlesisngles · signles · singels · singgles · singless · singlles · singlse · sinlges

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "official" and "singles" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "official" is an adjective and "singles" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "official" or "singles" show up more?
"singles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,773 in our German list, against #20,689 for "official". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "official" and "singles". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "official" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "singles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,847,275 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "official" and "singles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "official 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 #1,847,275 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