tearsvsteureConfusable pair

Quick tell: tears is a noun, teure is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#32,803
“tears” frequency rank
#7,118
“teure” frequency rank
39921
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tears teure
Definition Plural des Substantivs tear Nominativ Singular Femininum Positiv der starken Flexion des Adjektivs teuer

Letter map: tears vs teure

Shared letters muted; letters that set tears and teure apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

5 ch
tears
5 ch
teure

Part-of-speech tell for tears / teure

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tears is anoun and teureanadjective. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39921, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tears is recorded at frequency rank #32,803, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. teure is at rank #7,118, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈtɔɪ̯ʁə].

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 39921, this pair ranks #1,523,112 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of tears vs teure

Shared letters: ert. Private to "tears": as. Private to "teure": u.

"tears" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "teure" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • tearsetars · taers · tearrs · tearss · teasr · teras · ttears
  • teureeture · tteure · tuere

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tears" and "teure" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tears" is a noun and "teure" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "tears" or "teure"?
"teure" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #7,118 in our German list, against #32,803 for "tears". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "tears" and "teure".

  • Full dictionary entry for "tears" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "teure" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,523,112 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tears" and "teure" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs tears". 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 #1,523,112 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