Rat
[ʁaːt]
The verdict
“Rat” is a regularly-used German word, ranked #1,567 in German word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,567
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Empfehlung, sich in einer bestimmten Weise zu verhalten
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 | Rat |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [ʁaːt] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,567 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “Rat” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for Rat is 3 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ʁaːt]. Corpus data places it at rank #1,567 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for Rat, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "re", "Rb", "Rn", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No documented word history exists for this headword, so any spelling logic here comes from how the word's sounds map to letters, not a documented origin story. The correct German form is Rat, spelled R-A-T.
Definition
- 1Empfehlung, sich in einer bestimmten Weise zu verhalten
- 2beratendes Gremium
- 3ein Mitglied eines Gremiums; Amtsbezeichnung für ein solches
- 4Amtsbezeichnung im öffentlichen Dienst; Eingangsamt im höheren Dienst der Bundesrepublik
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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Using “Rat”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is R-A-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ʁaːt] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “re” - see the side-by-side comparison. Rat vs re
- 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.