sintvsspätConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#33,815
“sint” frequency rank
#1,335
“spät” frequency rank
35150
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sint spät
Definition 3. Person Plural Konjunktiv Präsens Aktiv des Verbs esse zeitlich fortgeschritten, kurz vor Schluss, gegen Ende

Letter map: sint vs spät

Shared letters muted; letters that set sint and spät apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
sint
4 ch
spät

Part-of-speech tell for sint / spät

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sint is averb and spätanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 35150, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sint is recorded at frequency rank #33,815, classified as averb, pronounced […]. spät is at rank #1,335, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ʃpɛːt].

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 35150, this pair ranks #1,646,867 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of sint vs spät

Shared letters: st. Private to "sint": in. Private to "spät": .

"sint" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "spät" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sintisnt · sinnt · sintt · sitn · snit · ssint

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "sint" for "spät" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sint" is a verb and "spät" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "sint" or "spät"?
"spät" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,335 in our German list, against #33,815 for "sint". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "sint" and "spät". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sint" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "spät" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,646,867 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sint" and "spät" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs sint". 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 #1,646,867 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