ISIS
The verdict
“ISIS” is a regularly-used German word, ranked #7,491 in German word frequency and used as an abbreviation.
- #7,491
- frequency rank, German
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Abkürzung für die Terrorgruppe „Islamischer Staat im Irak und Syrien“ bzw. „Islamischer Staat im Irak und in Syrien“ bzw. „Islamischer Staat im Irak und in (Groß-)Syrien“
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 | ISIS |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Abbreviation |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #7,491 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ISIS” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for ISIS is 4 letters long, classified as an abbreviation. Corpus data places it at rank #7,491 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Abkürzung für die Terrorgruppe „Islamischer Staat im Irak und Syrien“ bzw. „Islamischer Staat im Irak und in Syrien“ bzw. „Islamischer Staat im Irak und in (Groß-)Syrien“".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for ISIS, with forms such as "iiss", "isiss", and "issi". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ist", "iss", "ISO", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, 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 ISIS, spelled I-S-I-S.
Definition
- 1Abkürzung für die Terrorgruppe „Islamischer Staat im Irak und Syrien“ bzw. „Islamischer Staat im Irak und in Syrien“ bzw. „Islamischer Staat im Irak und in (Groß-)Syrien“
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: iiss,isiss,issi,issis,siis
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of ISIS - 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 “ISIS”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is I-S-I-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Don't mix it up with “ist” - see the side-by-side comparison. ISIS vs ist
- 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.