began
[…]
The verdict
“began” is uncommon German (frequency #86,251 among 5,818 “B” headwords), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #86,251
- frequency rank, German
- 5,818
- “B” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs begin
Corpus desk
Index DE-began · began · German
began · rank #86,251 · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-RARE #86,251
- LEN-MID 5 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,818
- PHOTO-FINISH befeuchtet
Nearest frequency peer: befeuchtet (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Langschwanz-Ränge nahe „began“
Dünnes Band: Balken invertieren den Rang, seltenere Formen wirken kürzer
- Bedeutungsv…
Bedeutungsverlust
13,752 corpus weight
- befeuchtet
befeuchtet
13,751 corpus weight
- began
began
13,750 corpus weight
- Begehrlichk…
Begehrlichkeiten
13,749 corpus weight
- beherzten
beherzten
13,748 corpus weight
- beidseits
beidseits
13,747 corpus weight
What this shows Langschwanz-Sicht: wo „began“ gegen ähnlich seltene deutsche Ränge sitzt.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | began |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | […] |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #86,251 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Langschwanz-Rang von „began“ im Deutschen
Rare enough to double-check
began is uncommon German at frequency #86,251 among 5,818 “B” headwords, classed as averb, transcribed […]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs begin".
began has no tracked misspelling variants, suggesting the orthography follows predictable German patterns. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct German form is began, spelled B-E-G-A-N.
Definition
- 1Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs begin
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "began", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked German headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).