quo
[ku̯o]
The verdict
“quo” is a moderately-common German word, ranked #10,345 in German word frequency and used as a pronoun.
- #10,345
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 11
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - was / welche(r) unbestimmte/noch unbekannte Sache/Sachverhalt — gefragt wird nicht nach einer konkreten Person oder Sache, dafür: qua Bedeutung [2])
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 | quo |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Pronoun |
| IPA | [ku̯o] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #10,345 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 11 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “quo” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for quo is 3 letters long, classified as a pronoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ku̯o]. Corpus data places it at rank #10,345 in overall German word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "was / welche(r) unbestimmte/noch unbekannte Sache/Sachverhalt — gefragt wird nicht nach einer konkreten Person oder Sache, dafür: qua Bedeutung [2])".
We couldn't generate a plausible misspelling set for quo, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 11 confusable-pair relationships, "Quote", "Q", "qm", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is quo, spelled Q-U-O.
Definition
- 1was / welche(r) unbestimmte/noch unbekannte Sache/Sachverhalt — gefragt wird nicht nach einer konkreten Person oder Sache, dafür: qua Bedeutung [2])
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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Using “quo”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is Q-U-O - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ku̯o] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Quote” - see the side-by-side comparison. quo vs Quote
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
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.