late
[…]
The verdict
“late” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #14,348) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #14,348
- frequency rank, German
- 2,640
- “L” headwords
- 3
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 2, 2026) - spät
Corpus desk
Index DE-late · late · German
late · rank #14,348 · 3 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #14,348
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 3 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,640
- PHOTO-FINISH Landau
Nearest frequency peer: Landau (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “late”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Kätzchen
Kätzchen
85,656 corpus weight
- kühne
kühne
85,655 corpus weight
- Landau
Landau
85,654 corpus weight
- late
late
85,653 corpus weight
- Lehrkräfte
Lehrkräfte
85,652 corpus weight
- Lettland
Lettland
85,651 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “late” sits against the nearest ranked German headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | late |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | […] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #14,348 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “late” sits in German frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for late is neighbouring look-alikes ("le", "Lee", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced […]. Frequency #14,348 among 2,640 “L” headwords. Gloss: "spät".
Our generated misspelling index lists 3 likely wrong-spelling variants for late, with forms such as "laet", "llate", and "ltae". 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, "le", "Lee", "law", 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 its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct German form is late, spelled L-A-T-E.
Definition
- 1spät
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how late appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
It was late in the evening when we finally arrived.
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- laet
- llate
- ltae
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of late - 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.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "late"?
What does "late" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "late"?
How do you pronounce "late"?
What language does "late" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "late", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked German headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
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.