warvswurdConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#39
“war” frequency rank
#25,845
“wurd” frequency rank
25884
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature war wurd
Definition 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum des Verbs sein kleinste selbstständige bedeutungstragende Einheit der Sprache; Wort

Where the eye mixes war and wurd

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch
war
4 ch
wurd

Visual trap between war and wurd

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: war is [vaːɐ̯] while wurd is [vøt]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 25884, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

war is recorded at frequency rank #39, classified as averb, pronounced [vaːɐ̯]. wurd is at rank #25,845, tagged as anoun, pronounced [vøt].

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 25884, this pair ranks #1,826,550 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of war vs wurd

Shared letters: rw. Private to "war": a. Private to "wurd": du.

"war" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "wurd" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wurduwrd · wrud · wudr · wurdd · wurrd · wwurd

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "war" and "wurd" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "war" is a verb and "wurd" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "war" or "wurd"?
"war" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #39 in our German list, against #25,845 for "wurd". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "war" and "wurd" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "war" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wurd" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,826,550 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "war" and "wurd" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Werds vs wurd". 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 #1,826,550 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