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ernst

ernst is an German adjective meaning serious, severe, grave. It is the 321st most common word in German, which puts it at CEFR level A1. It turns up in about 1 in 274 sentences of real German prose.

321

rank

of 5,000

A1

CEFR level

by frequency

1 in 274

sentences

contain it

66.9%

running total

of a book covered

Running total is cumulative: knowing ernst and every German word above it covers 66.9% of the running words in a real book.

Is ernst worth learning now?

Yes - ernst is inside the first thousand German words, and those thousand cover 76.55% of the prose in a real book and 84.27% of everyday speech. Words this common are worth far more study time than anything further down the list.

Frequency is the honest guide to order, not to method. A word learned from a list on its own fades; the same word met inside a sentence you wanted to read stays. Check a German text against the CEFR bands to see whether what you are reading is at your level.

German words of the same frequency

See all 5,000 most common German words, or look up any of the 20,029 German words Einlang ranks.

Where this comes from

The rank is measured, not copied: 151 million words of subtitle dialogue for how German is spoken, and 48 public-domain books for how it is written. Conjugations and plurals count towards the word they belong to, so ernst is ranked as a word rather than as a spelling. The meaning and part of speech come from Wiktionary. Generated 2026-07-27.

Also on Einlang: the most common French words and the most common Spanish words.

Meet ernst where it actually lives

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