silly

[…]

/[…]/ adj

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

The verdict

“silly” is uncommon German (frequency #60,077 among 8,027 “S” headwords), classed as an adjective. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#60,077
frequency rank, German
8,027
“S” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - albern, dumm

Corpus desk

Index DE-silly · silly · German

silly · rank #60,077 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #60,077
  • LEN-MID 5 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-DENSE 8,027
  • PHOTO-FINISH Sieglinde

Nearest frequency peer: Sieglinde (-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 „silly“

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

corpus weight

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

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for silly
PropertyValue
Headwordsilly
LanguageGerman
Part of speechAdjective
IPA[…]
Letters5
Frequency rank#60,077
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Langschwanz-Rang von „silly“ im Deutschen

Von links nach rechts: die wenigen Träger des Alltags, dann der lange Schwanz kaum gebrauchter Formen.sillyfällt in diesen Seltenheitsbereich:

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

Die Skala ist logarithmisch (jeder Tick ≈ 10× seltener). Seltene Nachbarn derselben Bandbreite: „Sieglinde“ (#60,076), „sins“ (#60,078), „Sicherheitskontrolle“ (#60,075). Unter 8,027 „S“-Lemmata liegt „silly“ bei #60,077. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

silly is uncommon German at frequency #60,077 among 8,027 “S” headwords, classed as anadjective, transcribed […]. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "albern, dumm".

The misspelling generator found no plausible variants for silly, which points to an orthography that plays by predictable German rules. We don't track a confusable pairing for this entry, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.

This entry's etymology isn't recorded, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct German form is silly, spelled S-I-L-L-Y.

Definition

  1. 1
    albern, dumm

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

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

  1. My sister is silly.
  2. This joke was silly.

This word in other languages

idiot(Français)

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 "silly"?
"silly" is spelled S-I-L-L-Y. The IPA pronunciation is […].
What does "silly" mean?
As an adjective, "silly" means: albern, dumm
How do you pronounce "silly"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "silly" is […]. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "silly" come from?
"silly" 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 "silly", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked German headwords with 5 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

sooft#60,084sause#60,027rinnt#60,009Thora#60,147

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list