breath vs by, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“breath” and “by” are a confusable German pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#49,533
“breath” frequency rank: #1,627
“by” frequency rank: 51160
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	breath	by
Definition	Atem	Stadt

Letter map: breath vs by

Shared letters muted; letters that set breath and by apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

6 ch

breath

2 ch

Corpus notes: breath and by

breath and by are indexed as a confusable German pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51160, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

breath is recorded at frequency rank #49,533, classified as anoun, 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 51160, this pair ranks #1,146,185 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of breath vs by

Shared letters: b. Private to "breath": aehrt. Private to "by": y.

"breath" · 6 letters · shape CCVVCC · "by" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

breath ← bbreath · berath · braeth · breaht · breathh · breatth · bretah · brreath

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "breath" and "by" mean the same thing in a sentence?

No. They differ by 4 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.

Which is more common, "breath" or "by"?

"by" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,627 in our German list, against #49,533 for "breath". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "breath" vs "by" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "breath" 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 #1,146,185 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"breath" and "by" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "breath 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 #1,146,185 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.