smoothvswarsWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: smooth is a adjective, wars is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#49,255
“smooth” frequency rank
#3,861
“wars” frequency rank
53116
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature smooth wars
Definition glatt 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs war

Letter map: smooth vs wars

Shared letters muted; letters that set smooth and wars apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

6 ch
smooth
4 ch
wars

Part-of-speech tell for smooth / wars

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: smooth is anadjective and warsaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 53116, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

smooth is recorded at frequency rank #49,255, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. wars is at rank #3,861, tagged as averb, 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 53116, this pair ranks #1,070,582 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of smooth vs wars

Shared letters: s. Private to "smooth": hmot. Private to "wars": arw.

"smooth" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC  ·  "wars" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • smoothmsooth · smmooth · smooht · smoothh · smootth · smoth · smotoh · somoth
  • warsawrs · warrs · warss · wasr · wras · wwars

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "smooth" for "wars" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "smooth" is an adjective and "wars" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "smooth" or "wars" show up more?
"wars" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,861 in our German list, against #49,255 for "smooth". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Pair "smooth" vs "wars" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "smooth" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wars" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,070,582 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "smooth" and "wars" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs smooth". 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 #1,070,582 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