both vs of, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“both” is an adjective and “of” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#28,111
“both” frequency rank: #324
“of” frequency rank: 28435
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	both	of
Definition	beide	von

Letter map: both vs of

Shared letters muted; letters that set both and of apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

4 ch

both

2 ch

Role in the sentence - both and of

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: both is anadjective and ofapreposition. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28435, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

both is recorded at frequency rank #28,111, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. of is at rank #324, tagged as aprep, 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 28435, this pair ranks #1,784,813 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of both vs of

Shared letters: o. Private to "both": bht. Private to "of": f.

"both" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "of" · 2 letters · shape VC

Known mistypes of this pair

both ← bboth · boht · bothh · botth · btoh · obth

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "both" for "of" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "both" is an adjective and "of" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Frequency check: "both" vs "of" - which ranks higher?

"of" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #324 in our German list, against #28,111 for "both". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "both" and "of".

Full dictionary entry for "both" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "of" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #1,784,813 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"both" and "of" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "both 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 #1,784,813 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.