can
Letters
3 characters
Frequency Rank
#4,597
in German word usage
Misspellings
0
tracked variants
Confusables
20
similar word pairs
can is aGermanverb. It means: zeigt die Fähigkeit an, etwas tun zu können; können Pronounced [kæn]. It ranks #4,597 in German word frequency. Often confused with cm and CD.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | can |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [kæn] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #4,597 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for can is 3 letters long, classified as averb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [kæn]. Corpus data places it at rank #4,597 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No frequent misspelling variants are recorded for can in our index, suggesting the orthography either follows predictable German patterns or the word is uncommon enough that typo corpora lack signal.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "cm", "CD", "Ch", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct German form is can, spelled C-A-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1zeigt die Fähigkeit an, etwas tun zu können; können
- 2zeigt die Erlaubnis oder Bestimmung an, etwas zu tun; können, dürfen
This word in other languages
Frequency rank: #4,597 in German
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "can"?
What does "can" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "can"?
How do you pronounce "can"?
What language does "can" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Nearby German words
Other entries that begin with the letter C in our German index: