pistevsplateTell them apart

Which to use

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

#17,679
“piste” frequency rank
#32,211
“plate” frequency rank
49890
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature piste plate
Definition Punkt Teller

Where the eye mixes piste and plate

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
piste
5 ch
plate

Visual trap between piste and plate

A purely visual mix-up. piste ([ˈpiste]) and plate ([pleɪt]) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49890, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

piste is recorded at frequency rank #17,679, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈpiste]. plate is at rank #32,211, tagged as anoun, pronounced [pleɪt].

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 49890, this pair ranks #1,194,509 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of piste vs plate

Shared letters: ept. Private to "piste": is. Private to "plate": al.

"piste" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "plate" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • pisteipste · piset · pisste · pistte · pitse · ppiste · psite
  • platelpate · palte · plaet · pllate · pltae · pplate

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "piste" for "plate" ever safe?
No. They are said differently ([ˈpiste] versus [pleɪt]) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "piste" or "plate"?
"piste" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,679 in our German list, against #32,211 for "plate". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Eye-level mix-up between "piste" and "plate" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "piste" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "plate" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,194,509 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "piste" and "plate" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "plants vs plate". 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 #1,194,509 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