POW

abbrev

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“POW” is uncommon German (frequency #65,583 among 3,409 “P” headwords), classed as an abbreviation. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#65,583
frequency rank, German
3,409
“P” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - prisoner of war

Corpus desk

Index DE-pow · POW · German

POW · rank #65,583 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #65,583
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 3,409
  • PHOTO-FINISH pound

Nearest frequency peer: pound (-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 „POW“

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

corpus weight

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

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for POW
PropertyValue
HeadwordPOW
LanguageGerman
Part of speechAbbreviation
Letters3
Frequency rank#65,583
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Langschwanz-Rang von „POW“ im Deutschen

Die Häufigkeit läuft von den wenigen Alltagswörtern (links) bis zur langen, seltenen Schwanzseite (rechts).POWfällt in diesen Seltenheitsbereich:

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

Die Skala ist logarithmisch (jeder Tick ≈ 10× seltener). Seltene Nachbarn derselben Bandbreite: „pound“ (#65,582), „Posteingang“ (#65,581), „Preisfrage“ (#65,585). Unter 3,409 „P“-Lemmata liegt „POW“ bei #65,583. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

POW is uncommon German at frequency #65,583 among 3,409 “P” headwords, classed as anabbreviation. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "prisoner of war".

We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for POW, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. No close-neighbour confusable shows up for this headword in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is POW, spelled P-O-W.

Definition

  1. 1
    prisoner of war

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

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

  1. A POW is a combatant who is held in continuing custody by an enemy power during war.

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 "POW"?
"POW" is spelled P-O-W.
What does "POW" mean?
As an abbreviation, "POW" means: prisoner of war
What language does "POW" come from?
"POW" 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 "POW", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

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

ore#65,552Oki#65,550Mee#65,494maj#65,484

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list