wildevsWillemTell them apart

Quick tell: wilde is a adjective, Willem is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“wilde” is an adjective and “Willem” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#24,445
“wilde” frequency rank
#30,863
“Willem” frequency rank
55308
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature wilde Willem
Definition Accusatif féminin singulier de la déclinaison faible de wild. Nom de famille.

Letter map: wilde vs Willem

Shared letters muted; letters that set wilde and Willem apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. wilde runs 5 letters (CVCCV) against Willem's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
wilde
6 ch
Willem

Role in the sentence - wilde and Willem

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: wilde is anadjective and Willemaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55308, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

wilde is recorded at frequency rank #24,445, classified as anadj, pronounced \ˈvɪldə\. Willem is at rank #30,863, tagged as aname.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 55308, this pair ranks #128,294 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of wilde vs Willem

Shared letters: eilw. Private to "wilde": d. Private to "Willem": m.

"wilde" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV  ·  "Willem" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • wilde ← iwlde · widle · wildde · wiled · willde · wlide · wwilde
  • Willem ← iwllem · wilelm · wilem · willemm · willme · wlilem · wwillem

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "wilde" for "Willem" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "wilde" is an adjective and "Willem" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "wilde" vs "Willem" - which ranks higher?
"wilde" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,445 in our French list, against #30,863 for "Willem". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "wilde" and "Willem".

  • Full dictionary entry for "wilde" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Willem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #128,294 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "wilde" and "Willem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "wallet vs Willem". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #128,294 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list