zerfressen
The verdict
“zerfressen” is an uncommon German word, ranked #52,602 in German word frequency and used as a verb.
- #52,602
- frequency rank, German
- 10
- letters
Dominant Wiktionary sense: durch Beißen/Nagen (Fressen/Fraß) beschädigen oder zerstören
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | zerfressen |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| IPA | [t͡sɛɐ̯ˈfʁɛsn̩] |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #52,602 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “zerfressen” sits in German frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The German entry for zerfressen is 10 letters long, classified as a verb, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [t͡sɛɐ̯ˈfʁɛsn̩]. Corpus data places it at rank #52,602 in overall German word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for zerfressen 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 zerfressen, spelled Z-E-R-F-R-E-S-S-E-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1durch Beißen/Nagen (Fressen/Fraß) beschädigen oder zerstören
- 2durch einen aggressiven Stoff oder ein sehr starkes Gefühl beschädigen
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.
Cite this page
Free to reuse with attribution (CC BY-SA). Copy the citation:
PlainSpell, “zerfressen, 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/zerfressen
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Using “zerfressen”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct German spelling is Z-E-R-F-R-E-S-S-E-N - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as [t͡sɛɐ̯ˈfʁɛsn̩] (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 Z in our German index: