sonsvssungWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: sons is a noun, sung is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“sons” is a noun and “sung” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,315
“sons” frequency rank
#27,077
“sung” frequency rank
52392
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature sons sung
Definition Plural des Substantivs son Partizip Perfekt (past participle) des Verbs sing

Letter map: sons vs sung

Shared letters muted; letters that set sons and sung apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
sons
4 ch
sung

Part-of-speech tell for sons / sung

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: sons is anoun and sungaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52392, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

sons is recorded at frequency rank #25,315, classified as anoun, pronounced [sʌnz]. sung is at rank #27,077, 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 52392, this pair ranks #1,098,740 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of sons vs sung

Shared letters: ns. Private to "sons": o. Private to "sung": gu.

"sons" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "sung" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • sonsosns · snos · sonns · sonss · sosn · ssons
  • sungsnug · ssung · sugn · sungg · sunng · usng

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "sons" and "sung" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "sons" is a noun and "sung" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "sons" or "sung" show up more?
"sons" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,315 in our German list, against #27,077 for "sung". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "sons" vs "sung" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "sons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "sung" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,098,740 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "sons" and "sung" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs sung". 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 #1,098,740 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