Which to use
“around” is a preposition and “by” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #17,218
- “around” frequency rank
- #1,627
- “by” frequency rank
- 18845
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | around | by |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | um … herum, rund um, ringsum | Stadt |
Letter map: around vs by
Shared letters muted; letters that set around and by apart highlighted. No shared letter run.
Part-of-speech tell for around / by
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: around is apreposition and byanoun. On the page they differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18845, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
around is recorded at frequency rank #17,218, classified as aprep, pronounced […]. by is at rank #1,627, tagged as anoun, pronounced […].
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 18845, this pair ranks #1,914,340 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of around vs by
Shared letters: none. Private to "around": adnoru. Private to "by": by.
"around" · 6 letters · shape VCVVCC · "by" · 2 letters · shape CV
Known mistypes of this pair
- around ← aorund · aronud · aroudn · aroundd · arounnd · arround · aruond · raound
Frequently Asked Questions
Can "around" and "by" be used interchangeably?
Which is more common, "around" or "by"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "around" and "by".
- Full dictionary entry for "around" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "by" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #1,914,340 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "around" and "by" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "around vs puzzles". 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 #1,914,340 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.