thou shalt not kill
[ðaʊ ʃælt nɒt ˈkɪl]
The verdict
“thou shalt not kill” is outside the top-ranked German vocabulary, used as a phrase - the kind of word writers most often double-check.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency German
- 19
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) — archaische oder poetische Form von „du sollst nicht töten” (das sechste Gebot aus dem Alten Testament)
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | thou shalt not kill |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Phrase |
| IPA | [ðaʊ ʃælt nɒt ˈkɪl] |
| Letters | 19 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “thou shalt not kill” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for thou shalt not kill is 19 letters long, classified as a phrase, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [ðaʊ ʃælt nɒt ˈkɪl]. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "archaische oder poetische Form von „du sollst nicht töten” (das sechste Gebot aus dem Alten Testament)".
No misspelling variants are generated for thou shalt not kill in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable German patterns. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct German form is thou shalt not kill, spelled T-H-O-U- -S-H-A-L-T- -N-O-T- -K-I-L-L, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1archaische oder poetische Form von „du sollst nicht töten” (das sechste Gebot aus dem Alten Testament)
Synonyms
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “thou shalt not kill, German word data” (May 6, 2026). Derived from Wiktionary (kaikki.org, CC BY-SA) and an open word-frequency list. https://plainspell.com/de/wort/thou-shalt-not-kill
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Using “thou shalt not kill”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is T-H-O-U- -S-H-A-L-T- -N-O-T- -K-I-L-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [ðaʊ ʃælt nɒt ˈkɪl] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Browse more German words and confusable pairs in the same reference. German words
Nearby German words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our German index: