PauvstakingWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: Pau is a name, taking is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Pau” is a name and “taking” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,946
“Pau” frequency rank
#47,767
“taking” frequency rank
97713
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Pau taking
Definition Stadt in Südfrankreich Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs take

Letter map: Pau vs taking

Shared letters muted; letters that set Pau and taking apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. Pau runs 3 letters (CVV) against taking's 6 (CVCVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
Pau
6 ch
taking

Grammar separator: Pau vs taking

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Pau is aname and takingaverb. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 97713, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Pau is recorded at frequency rank #49,946, classified as aname, pronounced […]. taking is at rank #47,767, tagged as averb, 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 97713, this pair ranks #3,012 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Pau vs taking

Shared letters: a. Private to "Pau": pu. Private to "taking": giknt.

"Pau" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "taking" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • taking ← atking · taikng · takign · takingg · takinng · takking · taknig · tkaing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Pau" for "taking" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Pau" is a name and "taking" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Pau" or "taking" show up more?
"taking" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #47,767 in our German list, against #49,946 for "Pau". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

You've compared "Pau" and "taking". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Pau" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "taking" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #3,012 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Pau" and "taking" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Pau 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 #3,012 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