willsvsyearConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#27,136
“wills” frequency rank
#13,524
“year” frequency rank
40660
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wills year
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs will eine Dauer von 365 Tagen; Jahr

Letter map: wills vs year

Shared letters muted; letters that set wills and year apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

5 ch
wills
4 ch
year

Role in the sentence - wills and year

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: wills is averb and yearanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 40660, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wills is recorded at frequency rank #27,136, classified as averb, pronounced […]. year is at rank #13,524, tagged as anoun, 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 40660, this pair ranks #1,502,057 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of wills vs year

Shared letters: none. Private to "wills": ilsw. Private to "year": aery.

"wills" · 5 letters · shape CVCCC  ·  "year" · 4 letters · shape VVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • willsiwlls · willss · wils · wilsl · wlils · wwills
  • yeareyar · yaer · yearr · yera · yyear

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "wills" for "year" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "wills" is a verb and "year" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "wills" vs "year" - which ranks higher?
"year" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,524 in our German list, against #27,136 for "wills". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "wills" vs "year" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "wills" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "year" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,502,057 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wills" and "year" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs wills". 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 #1,502,057 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