ordersvstelefaxTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#49,941
“orders” frequency rank
#45,620
“telefax” frequency rank
95561
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature orders telefax
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs order Telefax

Letter map: orders vs telefax

Shared letters muted; letters that set orders and telefax apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

6 ch
orders
7 ch
telefax

Part-of-speech tell for orders / telefax

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: orders is averb and telefaxanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 95561, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

orders is recorded at frequency rank #49,941, classified as averb, pronounced […]. telefax is at rank #45,620, 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 95561, this pair ranks #11,045 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of orders vs telefax

Shared letters: e. Private to "orders": dors. Private to "telefax": afltx.

"orders" · 6 letters · shape VCCVCC  ·  "telefax" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ordersodrers · ordders · orderrs · orderss · ordesr · ordres · oredrs · orrders
  • telefaxetlefax · teelfax · teleafx · telefaxx · teleffax · telefxa · telfeax · tellefax

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "orders" for "telefax" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "orders" is a verb and "telefax" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "orders" or "telefax" show up more?
"telefax" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #45,620 in our German list, against #49,941 for "orders". 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 "orders" and "telefax".

  • Full dictionary entry for "orders" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "telefax" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #11,045 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "orders" and "telefax" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "orders 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 #11,045 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