assistsvsbyWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: assists is a verb, by is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“assists” is a verb and “by” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#37,364
“assists” frequency rank
#1,627
“by” frequency rank
38991
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature assists by
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs assist Stadt

Letter map: assists vs by

Shared letters muted; letters that set assists and by apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

7 ch
assists
2 ch
by

Role in the sentence - assists and by

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: assists is averb and byanoun. On the page they differ by 5 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 38991, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

assists is recorded at frequency rank #37,364, classified as averb, 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 38991, this pair ranks #1,549,140 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of assists vs by

Shared letters: none. Private to "assists": aist. Private to "by": by.

"assists" · 7 letters · shape VCCVCCC  ·  "by" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • assistsasissts · asists · assisst · assissts · assistss · assistts · assitss · asssits

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "assists" for "by" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "assists" is a verb and "by" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "assists" vs "by" - which ranks higher?
"by" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,627 in our German list, against #37,364 for "assists". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "assists" and "by".

  • Full dictionary entry for "assists" 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 #1,549,140 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "assists" and "by" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "assists 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 #1,549,140 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list