hay
[heɪ]
The verdict
“hay” is a moderately-common German word, ranked #32,588 in German word frequency and used as a noun.
- #32,588
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Tierfutter; Heu
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 | hay |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [heɪ] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #32,588 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “hay” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for hay is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [heɪ]. Corpus data places it at rank #32,588 in overall German word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Tierfutter; Heu".
Zero misspellings are on record for hay in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "hi", "hm", "He", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is hay, spelled H-A-Y.
Definition
- 1Tierfutter; Heu
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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Using “hay”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is H-A-Y - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [heɪ] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “hi” - see the side-by-side comparison. hay vs hi
- 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.