Sau
[zaʊ̯]
The verdict
“Sau” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #5,422) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #5,422
- frequency rank, German
- 8,027
- “S” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - weibliches Schwein ab dem ersten Ferkeln
Corpus desk
Index DE-sau · Sau · German
Sau · rank #5,422 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #5,422
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 8,027
- PHOTO-FINISH Schrank
Nearest frequency peer: Schrank (+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.
Häufigkeitsnachbarn des Verwechslers „Sau“
Peers mit ähnlichem Corpus-Gewicht, getrennt von den Verwechslungspaaren unten
- Reis
Reis
94,582 corpus weight
- Rekord
Rekord
94,581 corpus weight
- Sau
Sau
94,579 corpus weight
- Schrank
Schrank
94,578 corpus weight
- smith
smith
94,577 corpus weight
- sonstigen
sonstigen
94,576 corpus weight
What this shows Balken platzieren „Sau“ gegen die nächsten gerankten deutschen Lemmata, kein Reprint der Verwechslungsdesk.
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 | Sau |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [zaʊ̯] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #5,422 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus-Rang neben Verwechslern von „Sau“
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for Sau is neighbouring look-alikes ("so", "Sc", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced [zaʊ̯]. Frequency #5,422 among 8,027 “S” headwords. 9 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No misspelling variants are generated for Sau in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "so", "Sc", "SV", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
This entry carries no recorded etymology, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct German form is Sau, spelled S-A-U.
Definition
- 1weibliches Schwein ab dem ersten Ferkeln
- 2Schwein allgemein
- 3Wildschwein
- 4Schimpfwort für einen
- 5Schimpfwort für einen
- 6Schimpfwort für einen
- 7Teil von Komposita (Vorsilbe in Adjektiven, Teil in Substantiven): verstärkend
- 8erotisch-reizvoller Mensch
- 9Höchste Karte im Kartenspiel
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how Sau appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Wir müssen noch den Eber zur Sau führen.
Der Magen einer Sau, die Gedanken einer Frau und der Inhalt einer Worscht bleiben ewig unerforscht.
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
How do you spell "Sau"?
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Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "Sau", not the corpus desk frequency band.