openingvswindowsConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#30,228
“opening” frequency rank
#2,937
“windows” frequency rank
33165
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature opening windows
Definition Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs open Plural des Substantivs window

Letter map: opening vs windows

Shared letters muted; letters that set opening and windows apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

7 ch
opening
7 ch
windows

Part-of-speech tell for opening / windows

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: opening is averb and windowsanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 7 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 33165, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

opening is recorded at frequency rank #30,228, classified as averb, pronounced […]. windows is at rank #2,937, tagged as anoun, 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 33165, this pair ranks #1,691,893 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of opening vs windows

Shared letters: ino. Private to "opening": egp. Private to "windows": dsw.

"opening" · 7 letters · shape VCVCVCC  ·  "windows" · 7 letters · shape CVCCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • openingoepning · opeinng · openign · openingg · openinng · opennig · openning · opneing
  • windowsiwndows · widnows · winddows · windosw · windowss · windowws · windwos · winndows

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "opening" and "windows" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "opening" is a verb and "windows" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "opening" or "windows" show up more?
"windows" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,937 in our German list, against #30,228 for "opening". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "opening" and "windows".

  • Full dictionary entry for "opening" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "windows" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,691,893 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "opening" and "windows" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "opening 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 #1,691,893 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