tumvsturnWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: tum is a adverb, turn is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“tum” is an adverb and “turn” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#29,375
“tum” frequency rank
#14,188
“turn” frequency rank
43563
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature tum turn
Definition dann, alsdann 2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs turnen

Letter map: tum vs turn

Shared letters muted; letters that set tum and turn apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
tum
4 ch
turn

Part-of-speech tell for tum / turn

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: tum is anadverb and turnaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43563, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

tum is recorded at frequency rank #29,375, classified as anadv, pronounced […]. turn is at rank #14,188, tagged as averb, pronounced [tʊʁn].

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 43563, this pair ranks #1,414,153 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of tum vs turn

Shared letters: tu. Private to "tum": m. Private to "turn": nr.

"tum" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "turn" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • turntrun · tturn · tunr · turnn · turrn · utrn

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "tum" and "turn" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "tum" is an adverb and "turn" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "tum" or "turn" show up more?
"turn" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #14,188 in our German list, against #29,375 for "tum". 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 "tum" and "turn".

  • Full dictionary entry for "tum" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "turn" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,414,153 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "tum" and "turn" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs tum". 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 #1,414,153 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