SeilervsseinemTell them apart

Quick tell: Seiler is a noun, seinem is an unknown, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Seiler” is a noun and “seinem” is an unknown - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#29,780
“Seiler” frequency rank
#217
“seinem” frequency rank
29997
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Seiler seinem
Definition Handwerker, der Seile herstellt Dativ Singular Maskulinum des Possessivpronomens sein

Where the eye mixes Seiler and seinem

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. Seiler and seinem follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
Seiler
6 ch
seinem

Visual trap between Seiler and seinem

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Seiler is [ˈzaɪ̯lɐ] while seinem is [ˈzaɪ̯nəm]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs unknown), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 29997, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Seiler is recorded at frequency rank #29,780, classified as anoun, pronounced [ˈzaɪ̯lɐ]. seinem is at rank #217, tagged as anunknown, pronounced [ˈzaɪ̯nəm].

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 29997, this pair ranks #1,756,323 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Seiler vs seinem

Shared letters: eis. Private to "Seiler": lr. Private to "seinem": mn.

"Seiler" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "seinem" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Seileresiler · seielr · seilerr · seiller · seilre · selier · sieler · sseiler
  • seinemesinem · seienm · seinemm · seinme · seinnem · seniem · sienem · sseinem

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Seiler" for "seinem" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Seiler" is a noun and "seinem" an unknown, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "Seiler" or "seinem"?
"seinem" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #217 in our German list, against #29,780 for "Seiler". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "Seiler" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "seinem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,756,323 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Seiler" and "seinem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Seiler vs Stilen". 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 #1,756,323 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