seriousvsservusTell them apart

Quick tell: serious is a adjective, servus is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“serious” is an adjective and “servus” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#40,840
“serious” frequency rank
#18,699
“servus” frequency rank
59539
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature serious servus
Definition ernst traditioneller, eher intimer Gruß im bairischen Sprachraum; kann als Begrüßung ebenso wie zur Verabschiedung verwendet werden

Letter map: serious vs servus

Shared letters muted; letters that set serious and servus apart highlighted. Shared run: 5.

7 ch
serious
6 ch
servus

Role in the sentence - serious and servus

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: serious is anadjective and servusanintj. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59539, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

serious is recorded at frequency rank #40,840, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. servus is at rank #18,699, tagged as anintj, pronounced [ˈseɐ̯vus].

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 59539, this pair ranks #820,810 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of serious vs servus

Shared letters: ersu. Private to "serious": io. Private to "servus": v.

"serious" · 7 letters · shape CVCVVVC  ·  "servus" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • seriousesrious · seirous · seriosu · seriouss · seriuos · seroius · serrious · sreious
  • servusesrvus · serrvus · seruvs · servsu · servuss · servvus · sevrus · srevus

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "serious" for "servus" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "serious" is an adjective and "servus" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "serious" or "servus" show up more?
"servus" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #18,699 in our German list, against #40,840 for "serious". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "serious" vs "servus" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "serious" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "servus" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #820,810 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "serious" and "servus" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs serious". 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 #820,810 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