CDU
"cdu" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“CDU” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #37,372) as a proper noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #37,372
- frequency rank, English
- 5,599
- “C” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Initialism of Christian Democratic Union (of Germany) (“Christlich Demokratische Union”) (a major mainstream German political party)
Corpus desk
Index EN-cdu · CDU · English
CDU · rank #37,372 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #37,372
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,599
- PHOTO-FINISH cel
Nearest frequency peer: cel (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
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 neighbours of confusable “CDU”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- cataracts
cataracts
62,632 corpus weight
- cation
cation
62,631 corpus weight
- CDU
CDU
62,629 corpus weight
- cel
cel
62,628 corpus weight
- centaur
centaur
62,627 corpus weight
- centipede
centipede
62,626 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “CDU” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
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 | CDU |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Proper noun |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #37,372 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “CDU”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for CDU is neighbouring look-alikes ("co", "CM", …), not just typos; it is aproper noun. Frequency #37,372 among 5,599 “C” headwords. Gloss: "Initialism of Christian Democratic Union (of Germany) (“Christlich Demokratische Union”) (a major mainstream German political party)".
No misspelling variants are generated for CDU in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "co", "CM", "CT", 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 its spelling is best read as a straightforward mapping from sound to letter. The correct English form is CDU, spelled C-D-U.
Definition
- 1Initialism of Christian Democratic Union (of Germany) (“Christlich Demokratische Union”) (a major mainstream German political party)
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how CDU appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
“I am certain that this so-called ‘firewall’ will stop after this election,” AfD youth wing leader Hannes Gnauck told CNN Sunday evening. He added, “There will be a CDU after Friedrich Merz, and this CDU will have to work together with the AfD.”
This word in other languages
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 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "CDU", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).