whichvswichWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: which is a pronoun, wich is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“which” is a pronoun and “wich” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#12,204
“which” frequency rank
#19,451
“wich” frequency rank
31655
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature which wich
Definition welche? 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs weichen

Letter map: which vs wich

Shared letters muted; letters that set which and wich apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

5 ch
which
4 ch
wich

Part-of-speech tell for which / wich

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: which is apronoun and wichaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31655, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

which is recorded at frequency rank #12,204, classified as apron, pronounced […]. wich is at rank #19,451, tagged as averb, pronounced [vɪç].

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 31655, this pair ranks #1,723,773 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of which vs wich

Shared letters: chiw. Private to "which": -. Private to "wich": -.

"which" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC  ·  "wich" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • whichhwich · whcih · whhich · whicch · whichh · whihc · wihch · wwhich
  • wichiwch · wcih · wicch · wichh · wihc · wwich

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "which" and "wich" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "which" is a pronoun and "wich" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "which" or "wich"?
"which" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,204 in our German list, against #19,451 for "wich". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "which" and "wich". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "which" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wich" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,723,773 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "which" and "wich" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wich vs witch". 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 #1,723,773 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