essaysvsTOTell them apart

Quick tell: essays is a verb, TO is an abbrev, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“essays” is a verb and “TO” is an abbrev - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#17,877
“essays” frequency rank
#589
“TO” frequency rank
18466
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature essays TO
Definition 3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs essay KFZ-Kennzeichen für Torino (Turin)

Letter map: essays vs TO

Shared letters muted; letters that set essays and TO apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

6 ch
essays
2 ch
TO

Part-of-speech tell for essays / TO

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: essays is averb and TOanabbrev. On the page they differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 18466, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

essays is recorded at frequency rank #17,877, classified as averb, pronounced […]. TO is at rank #589, tagged as anabbrev, 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 18466, this pair ranks #1,917,958 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of essays vs TO

Shared letters: none. Private to "essays": aesy. Private to "TO": ot.

"essays" · 6 letters · shape VCCVVC  ·  "TO" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • essaysesasys · esays · essasy · essayss · essayys · essyas · eßays · sesays

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "essays" and "TO" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "essays" is a verb and "TO" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "essays" or "TO"?
"TO" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #589 in our German list, against #17,877 for "essays". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "essays" vs "TO" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "essays" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "TO" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,917,958 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "essays" and "TO" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "essays 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 #1,917,958 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