dow
The verdict
“dow” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #19,541) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #19,541
- frequency rank, German
- 2,764
- “D” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - sehr schwerhörig oder gehörlos
Corpus desk
Index DE-dow · dow · German
dow · rank #19,541 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #19,541
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,764
- PHOTO-FINISH downloaden
Nearest frequency peer: downloaden (+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 „dow“
Peers mit ähnlichem Corpus-Gewicht, getrennt von den Verwechslungspaaren unten
- Darmstädter
Darmstädter
80,464 corpus weight
- Degen
Degen
80,463 corpus weight
- domina
domina
80,462 corpus weight
- dow
dow
80,460 corpus weight
- downloaden
downloaden
80,459 corpus weight
- durchatmen
durchatmen
80,458 corpus weight
What this shows Balken platzieren „dow“ 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 | dow |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #19,541 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus-Rang neben Verwechslern von „dow“
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for dow is neighbouring look-alikes ("du", "Ds", …), not just typos; it is anadjective. Frequency #19,541 among 2,764 “D” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Zero misspellings are on record for dow in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular German conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "du", "Ds", "DW", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is dow, spelled D-O-W.
Definition
- 1sehr schwerhörig oder gehörlos
- 2von Gliedern: gefühllos, eingeschlafen
- 3ohne Kraft/Wirkung/Schwung
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how dow appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
„Ein hadd Tuberkeln in de Lung’, ein de Rüggendarr, ein was dow un ein lähmt worden, […]“
„[…] de hett an’n Kopp sonn grot Mul, wenn de spreckt, / denn hürt ’ne oll dow Fru up’n Vittel Wägs dat.“
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 "dow"?
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "dow", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked German headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).