pastevspustenWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#24,065
“paste” frequency rank
#35,395
“pusten” frequency rank
59460
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature paste pusten
Definition Paste durch plötzliches heftiges Ausatmen einen starken Luftstrom erzeugen

Letter map: paste vs pusten

Shared letters muted; letters that set paste and pusten apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
paste
6 ch
pusten

Part-of-speech tell for paste / pusten

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: paste is anoun and pustenaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59460, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

paste is recorded at frequency rank #24,065, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. pusten is at rank #35,395, tagged as averb, pronounced [ˈpuːstn̩].

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 59460, this pair ranks #823,709 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of paste vs pusten

Shared letters: epst. Private to "paste": a. Private to "pusten": nu.

"paste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "pusten" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pasteapste · paset · pastte · patse · ppaste · psate
  • pustenppusten · psuten · pusetn · pussten · pustenn · pustne · pustten · putsen

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "paste" for "pusten" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "paste" is a noun and "pusten" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "paste" vs "pusten" - which ranks higher?
"paste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,065 in our German list, against #35,395 for "pusten". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "paste" and "pusten".

  • Full dictionary entry for "paste" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pusten" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #823,709 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "paste" and "pusten" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pusten vs pustet". 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 #823,709 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