lief
[liːf]
The verdict
“lief” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,738) as a verb. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #1,738
- frequency rank, German
- 2,640
- “L” headwords
- 3
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs laufen
Corpus desk
Index DE-lief · lief · German
lief · rank #1,738 · 3 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,738
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-LOW 3 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,640
- PHOTO-FINISH Lauf
Nearest frequency peer: Lauf (-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 „lief“
Peers mit ähnlichem Corpus-Gewicht, getrennt von den Verwechslungspaaren unten
- hinzu
hinzu
98,266 corpus weight
- krank
krank
98,265 corpus weight
- Lauf
Lauf
98,264 corpus weight
- lief
lief
98,263 corpus weight
- Milliarden
Milliarden
98,262 corpus weight
- Mittwoch
Mittwoch
98,261 corpus weight
What this shows Balken platzieren „lief“ 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 | lief |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [liːf] |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,738 |
| Misspellings tracked | 3 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus-Rang neben Verwechslern von „lief“
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for lief is neighbouring look-alikes ("LTE", "lin", …), not just typos; it is averb pronounced [liːf]. Frequency #1,738 among 2,640 “L” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Our generated misspelling index lists 3 likely wrong-spelling variants for lief, with forms such as "ilef", "lieff", and "llief". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "LTE", "lin", "liv", 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, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct German form is lief, spelled L-I-E-F.
Definition
- 11. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs laufen
- 23. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum Aktiv des Verbs laufen
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as:
- ilef
- lieff
- llief
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of lief - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 "lief"?
What does "lief" mean?
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "lief", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked German headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).