OCR

abbrev

The verdict

“OCR” is uncommon German (frequency #74,928 among 1,007 “O” headwords), classed as an abbreviation. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#74,928
frequency rank, German
1,007
“O” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - optical character recognition

Corpus desk

Index DE-ocr · OCR · German

OCR · rank #74,928 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #74,928
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 1,007
  • PHOTO-FINISH nächtigen

Nearest frequency peer: nächtigen (-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.

Langschwanz-Ränge nahe „OCR“

Dünnes Band: Balken invertieren den Rang, seltenere Formen wirken kürzer

corpus weight

What this shows Langschwanz-Sicht: wo „OCR“ gegen ähnlich seltene deutsche Ränge sitzt.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for OCR
PropertyValue
HeadwordOCR
LanguageGerman
Part of speechAbbreviation
Letters3
Frequency rank#74,928
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Langschwanz-Rang von „OCR“ im Deutschen

Diese Skala geht vom Kern des Alltagdeutschen (links) bis zum seltenen Langschwanz (rechts).OCRfällt in diesen Seltenheitsbereich:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Die Ticks laufen logarithmisch; jeder ist rund zehnmal seltener. Seltene Nachbarn derselben Bandbreite: „nächtigen“ (#74,927), „nunmehrigen“ (#74,926), „Nudelsalat“ (#74,925). Unter 1,007 „O“-Lemmata liegt „OCR“ bei #74,928. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

OCR is uncommon German at frequency #74,928 among 1,007 “O” headwords, classed as anabbreviation. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.

OCR has no tracked misspelling variants, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.

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 OCR, spelled O-C-R.

Definition

  1. 1
    optical character recognition
  2. 2
    optical character reader

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how OCR appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Large digital libraries would be impractical to create without OCR.

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 "OCR"?
"OCR" is spelled O-C-R.
What does "OCR" mean?
As an abbreviation, "OCR" means: optical character recognition
What language does "OCR" come from?
"OCR" is a German word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar German words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "OCR", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked German headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list