plantsvstakingWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#49,962
“plants” frequency rank
#47,767
“taking” frequency rank
97729
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature plants taking
Definition Plural des Substantivs plant Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs take

Letter map: plants vs taking

Shared letters muted; letters that set plants and taking apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. plants (CCVCCC) and taking (CVCVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

6 ch
plants
6 ch
taking

Part-of-speech tell for plants / taking

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: plants is anoun and takingaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 6 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 97729, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

plants is recorded at frequency rank #49,962, classified as anoun, 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 97729, this pair ranks #2,973 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of plants vs taking

Shared letters: ant. Private to "plants": lps. Private to "taking": gik.

"plants" · 6 letters · shape CCVCCC  ·  "taking" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • plants ← lpants · palnts · plannts · plantss · plantts · platns · pllants · plnats
  • taking ← atking · taikng · takign · takingg · takinng · takking · taknig · tkaing

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "plants" and "taking" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "plants" is a noun and "taking" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "plants" 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 #49,962 for "plants". 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 "plants" and "taking".

  • Full dictionary entry for "plants" 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 #2,973 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "plants" and "taking" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "plants 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 #2,973 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