schauevsshameWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: schaue is a adjective, shame is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“schaue” is an adjective and “shame” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#4,228
“schaue” frequency rank
#43,491
“shame” frequency rank
47719
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature schaue shame
Definition Nominativ Singular Femininum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs schau jemanden beschämen

Letter map: schaue vs shame

Shared letters muted; letters that set schaue and shame apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. schaue runs 6 letters (CCCVVV) against shame's 5 (CCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
schaue
5 ch
shame

Part-of-speech tell for schaue / shame

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: schaue is anadjective and shameaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47719, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

schaue is recorded at frequency rank #4,228, classified as anadj, pronounced [ʃaʊ̯ə]. shame is at rank #43,491, 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 47719, this pair ranks #1,274,492 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of schaue vs shame

Shared letters: aehs. Private to "schaue": cu. Private to "shame": m.

"schaue" · 6 letters · shape CCCVVV  ·  "shame" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • schaue ← cshaue · scahue · scchaue · schaeu · schhaue · schuae · shcaue · sschaue
  • shame ← hsame · sahme · shaem · shamme · shhame · shmae · sshame

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "schaue" for "shame" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "schaue" is an adjective and "shame" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "schaue" or "shame"?
"schaue" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #4,228 in our German list, against #43,491 for "shame". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "schaue" vs "shame" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "schaue" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "shame" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,274,492 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "schaue" and "shame" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs shame". 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 #1,274,492 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