ten
[tɛn]
The verdict
“ten” is a regularly-used German word, ranked #6,729 in German word frequency and used as a numeral.
- #6,729
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - zehn
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 | ten |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Numeral |
| IPA | [tɛn] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #6,729 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “ten” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for ten is 3 letters long, classified as a numeral, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [tɛn]. Corpus data places it at rank #6,729 in overall German word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "zehn".
Zero misspellings are on record for ten in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "TO", "TV", "tu", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology 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 ten, spelled T-E-N.
Definition
- 1zehn
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 “ten”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is T-E-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [tɛn] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “TO” - see the side-by-side comparison. ten vs TO
- 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.