des
[dɛs]
The verdict
“des” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #23) as a determiner. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #23
- frequency rank, German
- 2,764
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - [1] Genitiv Singular von der und das
Corpus desk
Index DE-des · des · German
des · rank #23 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-CORE #23
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,764
- PHOTO-FINISH dem
Nearest frequency peer: dem (-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.
Häufigkeitsnachbarn des Verwechslers „des“
Peers mit ähnlichem Corpus-Gewicht, getrennt von den Verwechslungspaaren unten
- sich
sich
99,981 corpus weight
- auch
auch
99,980 corpus weight
- dem
dem
99,979 corpus weight
- des
des
99,978 corpus weight
- als
als
99,977 corpus weight
- er
er
99,976 corpus weight
What this shows Balken platzieren „des“ gegen die nächsten gerankten deutschen Lemmata, kein Reprint der Verwechslungsdesk.
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 | des |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Determiner |
| IPA | [dɛs] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #23 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus-Rang neben Verwechslern von „des“
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for des is neighbouring look-alikes ("du", "do", …), not just typos; it is adeterminer pronounced [dɛs]. Frequency #23 among 2,764 “D” headwords. Gloss: "[1] Genitiv Singular von der und das".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for des, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "du", "do", "dm", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, 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 des, spelled D-E-S.
Definition
- 1[1] Genitiv Singular von der und das
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
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "des", not the corpus desk frequency band.