palovsparsWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#38,939
“palo” frequency rank
#47,639
“pars” frequency rank
86578
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature palo pars
Definition Pfahl, Pfosten, Mast 2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs parsen

Letter map: palo vs pars

Shared letters muted; letters that set palo and pars apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. palo (CVCV) and pars (CVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
palo
4 ch
pars

Part-of-speech tell for palo / pars

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: palo is anoun and parsaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 86578, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

palo is recorded at frequency rank #38,939, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. pars is at rank #47,639, tagged as averb, pronounced [paʁs].

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 86578, this pair ranks #91,828 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of palo vs pars

Shared letters: ap. Private to "palo": lo. Private to "pars": rs.

"palo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "pars" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • palo ← aplo · pallo · paol · plao · ppalo
  • pars ← aprs · parrs · parss · pasr · ppars · pras

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "palo" for "pars" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "palo" is a noun and "pars" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "palo" or "pars" show up more?
"palo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #38,939 in our German list, against #47,639 for "pars". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "palo" vs "pars" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "palo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pars" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #91,828 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "palo" and "pars" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pars vs PMS". 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 #91,828 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