red
[ʁeːt]
The verdict
“red” is a regularly-used German word, ranked #1,935 in German word frequency and used as a verb.
- #1,935
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - 2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs reden
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 | red |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [ʁeːt] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,935 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “red” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for red is 3 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ʁeːt]. Corpus data places it at rank #1,935 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "2. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs reden".
No generated misspelling entries exist for red in our index, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Rn", "Rs", "RV", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct German form is red, spelled R-E-D.
Definition
- 12. Person Singular Imperativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs reden
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 “red”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is R-E-D - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ʁeːt] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Rn” - see the side-by-side comparison. red vs Rn
- 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.