onsvsOpasTell them apart

Quick tell: ons is a pronoun, Opas is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“ons” is a pronoun and “Opas” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#30,227
“ons” frequency rank
#27,880
“Opas” frequency rank
58107
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ons Opas
Definition Erste Person plural : unser Nominativ Plural des Substantivs Opa

Letter map: ons vs Opas

Shared letters muted; letters that set ons and Opas apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ons runs 3 letters (VCC) against Opas's 4 (VCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
ons
4 ch
Opas

Grammar separator: ons vs Opas

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: ons is apronoun and Opasanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58107, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ons is recorded at frequency rank #30,227, classified as apron. Opas is at rank #27,880, tagged as anoun, pronounced [ˈoːpas].

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 58107, this pair ranks #875,540 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of ons vs Opas

Shared letters: os. Private to "ons": n. Private to "Opas": ap.

"ons" · 3 letters · shape VCC  ·  "Opas" · 4 letters · shape VCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Opas ← oaps · opass · oppas · opsa · poas

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ons" for "Opas" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "ons" is a pronoun and "Opas" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "ons" or "Opas"?
"Opas" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #27,880 in our German list, against #30,227 for "ons". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "ons" vs "Opas" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Opas" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #875,540 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ons" and "Opas" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "OGH vs ons". 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 #875,540 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