dad
[dæd]
The verdict
“dad” is a regularly-used German word, ranked #9,875 in German word frequency and used as a noun.
- #9,875
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Vater, Papa
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 | dad |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [dæd] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #9,875 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “dad” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for dad is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [dæd]. Corpus data places it at rank #9,875 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Vater, Papa".
dad doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "du", "de", "do", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is dad, spelled D-A-D.
Definition
- 1Vater, Papa
This word in other languages
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
How do you spell "dad"?
What does "dad" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "dad"?
How do you pronounce "dad"?
What language does "dad" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Using “dad”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is D-A-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [dæd] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “du” - see the side-by-side comparison. dad vs du
- 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.