ou
[u]
The verdict
“ou” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,509) as a conjunction. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #16,509
- frequency rank, German
- 1,007
- “O” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - oder
Corpus desk
Index DE-ou · ou · German
ou · rank #16,509 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #16,509
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 1,007
- PHOTO-FINISH Ostküste
Nearest frequency peer: Ostküste (-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 “ou”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- oral
oral
83,495 corpus weight
- ordnen
ordnen
83,494 corpus weight
- Ostküste
Ostküste
83,493 corpus weight
- ou
ou
83,492 corpus weight
- packte
packte
83,491 corpus weight
- Pensionen
Pensionen
83,489 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “ou” 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 | ou |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Conjunction |
| IPA | [u] |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #16,509 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Wo “ou” in der deutschen Häufigkeit sitzt
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for ou is neighbouring look-alikes ("ov", "ox", …), not just typos; it is aconjunction pronounced [u]. Frequency #16,509 among 1,007 “O” headwords. Gloss: "oder".
No misspelling variants are generated for ou in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ov", "ox", "Out", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, leaving phoneme-to-grapheme mapping as the best guide to its spelling rather than a borrowing history. The correct German form is ou, spelled O-U.
Definition
- 1oder
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how ou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Vas-tu au cinéma ou au théâtre aujourd'hui?
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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What to do next
You've looked up "ou". Here's where to go from here.
- "ou" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "ov". View pair
- Usage frequency rank #16,509 among German headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more German words in the "O" letter cohort. O–Z browse
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.