CEO
[ˌsiːʔiːˈʔɔʊ]
The verdict
“CEO” is a moderately-common German word, ranked #10,250 in German word frequency and used as a noun.
- #10,250
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Leiter des operativen Geschäfts, Generaldirektor, Geschäftsführer; vergleichbar dem deutschen Vorstandsvorsitzenden
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | CEO |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [ˌsiːʔiːˈʔɔʊ] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,250 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “CEO” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for CEO is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ˌsiːʔiːˈʔɔʊ]. Corpus data places it at rank #10,250 in overall German word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Leiter des operativen Geschäfts, Generaldirektor, Geschäftsführer; vergleichbar dem deutschen Vorstandsvorsitzenden".
Zero misspellings are on record for CEO in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "cm", "Ch", "cl", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct German form is CEO, spelled C-E-O.
Definition
- 1Leiter des operativen Geschäfts, Generaldirektor, Geschäftsführer; vergleichbar dem deutschen Vorstandsvorsitzenden
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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Using “CEO”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is C-E-O - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ˌsiːʔiːˈʔɔʊ] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “cm” - see the side-by-side comparison. CEO vs cm
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.