Which to use
“river” is a noun and “rivers” is an unknown - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #9,616
- “river” frequency rank
- #35,418
- “rivers” frequency rank
- 45034
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | river | rivers |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Fluss | Plural des Substantives river |
Letter map: river vs rivers
Shared letters muted; letters that set river and rivers apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.
Part-of-speech tell for river / rivers
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: river is anoun and riversanunknown. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “river” sits inside “rivers”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45034, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
river is recorded at frequency rank #9,616, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈɹɪvə]. rivers is at rank #35,418, tagged as anunknown, 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 45034, this pair ranks #1,366,665 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of river vs rivers
Shared letters: eirv. Private to "river": -. Private to "rivers": s.
"river" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "rivers" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "river" for "rivers" ever safe?
Which is more common, "river" or "rivers"?
After this comparison
Pair "river" vs "rivers" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "river" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "rivers" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #1,366,665 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "river" and "rivers" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs rivers". 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 #1,366,665 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.