sea vs sei, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#11,518
“sea” frequency rank: #185
“sei” frequency rank: 11703
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	sea	sei
Definition	das Meer	2. Person Singular Präsens Imperativ Aktiv des Verbs sein

Where the eye mixes sea and sei

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch

sea

3 ch

sei

Visual trap between sea and sei

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: sea is [siː] while sei is [zaɪ̯]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by a single letter - a in “sea” becomes i in “sei”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 11703, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sea is recorded at frequency rank #11,518, classified as anoun, pronounced [siː]. sei is at rank #185, tagged as averb, pronounced [zaɪ̯].

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 11703, this pair ranks #1,968,397 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of sea vs sei

Shared letters: es. Private to "sea": a. Private to "sei": i.

"sea" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "sei" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sea" for "sei" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sea" is a noun and "sei" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "sea" or "sei" show up more?

"sei" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #185 in our German list, against #11,518 for "sea". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "sea" and "sei" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

Full dictionary entry for "sea" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "sei" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,968,397 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"sea" and "sei" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "sea vs serra". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,968,397 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.