famousvsofWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: famous is a adjective, of is a preposition, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#41,158
“famous” frequency rank
#324
“of” frequency rank
41482
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature famous of
Definition bekannt, berühmt von

Letter map: famous vs of

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

6 ch
famous
2 ch
of

Role in the sentence - famous and of

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: famous is anadjective and ofapreposition. On the page they differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41482, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

famous is recorded at frequency rank #41,158, 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 41482, this pair ranks #1,478,061 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of famous vs of

Shared letters: fo. Private to "famous": amsu. Private to "of": -.

"famous" · 6 letters · shape CVCVVC  ·  "of" · 2 letters · shape VC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • famousafmous · fammous · famosu · famouss · famuos · faomus · ffamous · fmaous

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "famous" and "of" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "famous" is an adjective and "of" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "famous" or "of" show up more?
"of" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #324 in our German list, against #41,158 for "famous". 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 "famous" and "of".

  • Full dictionary entry for "famous" 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 #1,478,061 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "famous" and "of" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "famous 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 #1,478,061 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