piecevspipeWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“piece” and “pipe” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#24,871
“piece” frequency rank
#44,135
“pipe” frequency rank
69006
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piece pipe
Definition Teil, Stück Röhre, Rohr

Letter map: piece vs pipe

Shared letters muted; letters that set piece and pipe apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
piece
4 ch
pipe

Corpus notes: piece and pipe

piece and pipe are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 69006, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piece is recorded at frequency rank #24,871, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. pipe is at rank #44,135, tagged as anoun, pronounced [paɪp].

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 69006, this pair ranks #490,016 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of piece vs pipe

Shared letters: eip. Private to "piece": c. Private to "pipe": -.

"piece" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "pipe" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pieceipece · peice · picee · piecce · pieec · ppiece
  • pipeippe · pippe · ppie · ppipe

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "piece" and "pipe" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary German text, does "piece" or "pipe" show up more?
"piece" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,871 in our German list, against #44,135 for "pipe". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "piece" vs "pipe" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "piece" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "pipe" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #490,016 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piece" and "pipe" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "pig vs pipe". 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 #490,016 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