sil vs still, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“sil” is a noun and “still” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,487
“sil” frequency rank: #2,993
“still” frequency rank: 51480
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	sil	still
Definition	Küchengerät mit vielen Löschern; Sieb	im Zustand der Bewegungslosigkeit, der Unbewegtheit und der Ruhe

Letter map: sil vs still

Shared letters muted; letters that set sil and still apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

3 ch

sil

5 ch

still

Role in the sentence - sil and still

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sil is anoun and stillanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51480, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sil is recorded at frequency rank #48,487, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. still is at rank #2,993, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ʃtɪl].

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 51480, this pair ranks #1,133,963 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sil vs still

Shared letters: ils. Private to "sil": -. Private to "still": t.

"sil" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "still" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

still ← sitll · sstill · stlil · sttill · tsill

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sil" for "still" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sil" is a noun and "still" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "sil" vs "still" - which ranks higher?

"still" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,993 in our German list, against #48,487 for "sil". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "sil" and "still".

Full dictionary entry for "sil" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "still" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,133,963 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"sil" and "still" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs sil". 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 #1,133,963 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.