placevsplaysTell them apart

Which to use

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

#11,501
“place” frequency rank
#18,658
“plays” frequency rank
30159
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature place plays
Definition Platz, Ort, Stelle Plural des Substantivs play

Same sound, different letters: place vs plays

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.

5 ch
place
5 ch
plays

Homophone desk: place vs plays

This is the hard kind. place and plays are pronounced identically ([pleɪs]) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 30159, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

place is recorded at frequency rank #11,501, classified as anoun, pronounced [pleɪs]. plays is at rank #18,658, tagged as anoun, pronounced [pleɪs].

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 30159, this pair ranks #1,753,275 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of place vs plays

Shared letters: alp. Private to "place": ce. Private to "plays": sy.

"place" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "plays" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • placelpace · palce · placce · plaec · plcae · pllace · pplace
  • playslpays · palys · plasy · playss · playys · pllays · plyas · pplays

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "place" and "plays" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same ([pleɪs]), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "place" vs "plays" - which ranks higher?
"place" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #11,501 in our German list, against #18,658 for "plays". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

"place" and "plays" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "place" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "plays" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,753,275 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "place" and "plays" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "plants vs plays". 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 #1,753,275 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