hell
hell is an German adjective meaning clear, bright, light. It is the 1,381st most common word in German, which puts it at CEFR level A2. It turns up in about 1 in 820 sentences of real German prose.
1,381
rank
of 5,000
A2
CEFR level
by frequency
1 in 820
sentences
contain it
79.1%
running total
of a book covered
Running total is cumulative: knowing hell and every German word above it covers 79.1% of the running words in a real book.
Is hell worth learning now?
hell sits at rank 1,381, past the first thousand words that cover 76.55% of a book on their own. It is a A2 word: worth learning once the commonest thousand are secure, and you will meet it often enough at that point to make it stick.
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
- anhalten #1,377 - to stop
- leeren #1,378 - to empty
- inzwischen #1,379 - since then, by now, in the meantime
- Sack #1,380 - sack
- eilig #1,382 - speedy, hasty
- Bericht #1,383 - report, account, news story
- betreten #1,384 - to enter, to go or come into
- prüfen #1,385 - to check, test, examine
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 hell 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.
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