wonvswowWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: won is a verb, wow is an intj, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“won” is a verb and “wow” is an intj - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#25,404
“won” frequency rank
#1,685
“wow” frequency rank
27089
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature won wow
Definition Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs win Ausdruck des Erstaunens

Letter map: won vs wow

Shared letters muted; letters that set won and wow apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
won
3 ch
wow

Grammar separator: won vs wow

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: won is averb and wowanintj. On the page they differ by a single letter - n in “won” becomes w in “wow”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27089, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

won is recorded at frequency rank #25,404, classified as averb, pronounced […]. wow is at rank #1,685, tagged as anintj, pronounced [vaʊ̯].

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 27089, this pair ranks #1,807,526 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of won vs wow

Shared letters: ow. Private to "won": n. Private to "wow": -.

"won" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "wow" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "won" and "wow" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "won" is a verb and "wow" an intj, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "won" or "wow" show up more?
"wow" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,685 in our German list, against #25,404 for "won". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "won" and "wow". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "won" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "wow" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,807,526 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "won" and "wow" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs won". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #1,807,526 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