van
[væn]
The verdict
“van” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,615) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #1,615
- frequency rank, German
- 4,163
- “V” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - geschlossener Kraftwagen mittlerer Größe mit Fenstern rundum oder nur vorn
Corpus desk
Index DE-van · van · German
van · rank #1,615 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,615
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 4,163
- PHOTO-FINISH unglaublich
Nearest frequency peer: unglaublich (-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.
Frequency neighbourhood for “van”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Schwarze
Schwarze
98,389 corpus weight
- solltest
solltest
98,388 corpus weight
- unglaublich
unglaublich
98,387 corpus weight
- van
van
98,386 corpus weight
- vorne
vorne
98,385 corpus weight
- Waffen
Waffen
98,384 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “van” sits against the nearest ranked German headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
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 | van |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | [væn] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #1,615 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Wo “van” in der deutschen Häufigkeit sitzt
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for van is neighbouring look-alikes ("VW", "vi", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced [væn]. Frequency #1,615 among 4,163 “V” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
Zero misspellings are on record for van in our index, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "VW", "vi", "VR", 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 van, spelled V-A-N.
Definition
- 1geschlossener Kraftwagen mittlerer Größe mit Fenstern rundum oder nur vorn
- 2britisch: geschlossener Eisenbahnwagen für Gepäck oder andere Güter wie Post
- 3militärisch oder im übertragenen Sinn vorausgehende Gruppe
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 "van"?
What does "van" mean?
What words are commonly confused with "van"?
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What language does "van" come from?
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Similar German words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "van", not the corpus desk frequency band.
What to do next
You've looked up "van". Here's where to go from here.
- "van" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "VW". View pair
- Usage frequency rank #1,615 among German headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more German words in the "V" letter cohort. V–Z browse
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
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.