ricevsriefTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#23,680
“rice” frequency rank
#2,783
“rief” frequency rank
26463
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature rice rief
Definition Reis 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs rufen

Letter map: rice vs rief

Shared letters muted; letters that set rice and rief apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
rice
4 ch
rief

Role in the sentence - rice and rief

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: rice is anoun and riefaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 26463, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

rice is recorded at frequency rank #23,680, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. rief is at rank #2,783, tagged as averb, pronounced [ʁiːf].

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 26463, this pair ranks #1,817,685 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of rice vs rief

Shared letters: eir. Private to "rice": c. Private to "rief": f.

"rice" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "rief" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • riceirce · rcie · ricce · riec · rrice
  • riefiref · rieff · rife · rrief

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "rice" and "rief" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "rice" is a noun and "rief" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "rice" or "rief" show up more?
"rief" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,783 in our German list, against #23,680 for "rice". 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 "rice" and "rief".

  • Full dictionary entry for "rice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rief" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,817,685 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "rice" and "rief" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs rice". 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 #1,817,685 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