ricevsroteWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: rice is a noun, rote is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#23,680
“rice” frequency rank
#1,901
“rote” frequency rank
25581
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature rice rote
Definition Reis Nominativ Singular Femininum Positiv der starken Flexion des Adjektivs rot

Letter map: rice vs rote

Shared letters muted; letters that set rice and rote apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
rice
4 ch
rote

Role in the sentence - rice and rote

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: rice is anoun and roteanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25581, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

rice is recorded at frequency rank #23,680, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. rote is at rank #1,901, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈʁoːtə].

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 25581, this pair ranks #1,831,092 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of rice vs rote

Shared letters: er. Private to "rice": ci. Private to "rote": ot.

"rice" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "rote" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • riceirce · rcie · ricce · riec · rrice
  • roteroet · rotte · rrote · rtoe

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "rice" and "rote" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "rice" is a noun and "rote" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "rice" or "rote"?
"rote" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,901 in our German list, against #23,680 for "rice". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "rice" vs "rote" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "rice" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "rote" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,831,092 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "rice" and "rote" 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 #1,831,092 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