showsvssoloTell them apart

Quick tell: shows is a verb, solo is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#8,130
“shows” frequency rank
#5,222
“solo” frequency rank
13352
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature shows solo
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs show allein

Letter map: shows vs solo

Shared letters muted; letters that set shows and solo apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. shows runs 5 letters (CCVCC) against solo's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
shows
4 ch
solo

Part-of-speech tell for shows / solo

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: shows is averb and soloanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13352, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

shows is recorded at frequency rank #8,130, classified as averb, pronounced […]. solo is at rank #5,222, tagged as anadj, 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 13352, this pair ranks #1,958,529 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of shows vs solo

Shared letters: os. Private to "shows": hw. Private to "solo": l.

"shows" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "solo" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • shows ← hsows · shhows · shosw · showss · showws · shwos · sohws · sshows
  • solo ← sloo · sollo · sool · ssolo

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "shows" for "solo" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "shows" is a verb and "solo" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "shows" or "solo" show up more?
"solo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,222 in our German list, against #8,130 for "shows". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "shows" vs "solo" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "shows" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "solo" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,958,529 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "shows" and "solo" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs shows". 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 #1,958,529 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