railwayvsultraWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: railway is a noun, ultra is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“railway” is a noun and “ultra” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#47,671
“railway” frequency rank
#8,146
“ultra” frequency rank
55817
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature railway ultra
Definition Eisenbahn weiter hinaus, jenseits, dahinter

Letter map: railway vs ultra

Shared letters muted; letters that set railway and ultra apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. railway runs 7 letters (CVVCCVV) against ultra's 5 (VCCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
railway
5 ch
ultra

Role in the sentence - railway and ultra

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: railway is anoun and ultraanadverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55817, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

railway is recorded at frequency rank #47,671, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. ultra is at rank #8,146, tagged as anadv, 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 55817, this pair ranks #964,550 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of railway vs ultra

Shared letters: alr. Private to "railway": iwy. Private to "ultra": tu.

"railway" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVV  ·  "ultra" · 5 letters · shape VCCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • railwayarilway · railawy · raillway · railwayy · railwway · railwya · raiwlay · raliway
  • ultralutra · ulltra · ulrta · ultar · ultrra · ulttra · utlra

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "railway" and "ultra" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "railway" is a noun and "ultra" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "railway" or "ultra"?
"ultra" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #8,146 in our German list, against #47,671 for "railway". 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 "railway" and "ultra".

  • Full dictionary entry for "railway" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ultra" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #964,550 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "railway" and "ultra" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs railway". 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 #964,550 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