war
[vaːɐ̯]
The verdict
“war” is in the everyday core of German, ranked #39 in German word frequency and used as a verb.
- #39
- frequency rank, German
- 3
- letters
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - 1. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum des Verbs sein
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 | war |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [vaːɐ̯] |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #39 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “war” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for war is 3 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [vaːɐ̯]. Corpus data places it at rank #39 in overall German word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
war has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "wo", "WM", "WE", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
No borrowing history is documented for this entry, so its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct German form is war, spelled W-A-R.
Definition
- 11. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum des Verbs sein
- 23. Person Singular Indikativ Präteritum des Verbs sein
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 “war”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is W-A-R - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [vaːɐ̯] (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “wo” - see the side-by-side comparison. war vs wo
- 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.