check
[t͡ʃɛk]
The verdict
“check” is a regularly-used German word, ranked #5,156 in German word frequency and used as a verb.
- #5,156
- frequency rank, German
- 5
- letters
- 8
- tracked misspellings
- 17
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - 2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs checken
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 | check |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [t͡ʃɛk] |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,156 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 17 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “check” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for check is 5 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [t͡ʃɛk]. Corpus data places it at rank #5,156 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs checken".
Our generated misspelling index lists 8 likely wrong-spelling variants for check, with forms such as "ccheck", "cehck", and "chcek". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 17 confusable-pair relationships, "chef", "cher", "chic", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct German form is check, spelled C-H-E-C-K.
Definition
- 12. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs checken
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ccheck,cehck,chcek,checck,checkk,chekc,chheck,hceck
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of check - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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 “check”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is C-H-E-C-K - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [t͡ʃɛk] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “chef” - see the side-by-side comparison. check vs chef
- 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.