Which to use
“federal” is an adjective and “within” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #21,247
- “federal” frequency rank
- #29,872
- “within” frequency rank
- 51119
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | federal | within |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | föderativ | innerhalb, in |
Letter map: federal vs within
Shared letters muted; letters that set federal and within apart highlighted. No shared letter run. federal runs 7 letters (CVCVCVC) against within's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for federal / within
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: federal is anadjective and withinapreposition. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51119, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
federal is recorded at frequency rank #21,247, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. within is at rank #29,872, 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 51119, this pair ranks #1,147,697 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of federal vs within
Shared letters: none. Private to "federal": adeflr. Private to "within": hintw.
"federal" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC · "within" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Is swapping "federal" for "within" ever safe?
Frequency check: "federal" vs "within" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
Pair "federal" vs "within" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.
- Full dictionary entry for "federal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "within" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #1,147,697 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "federal" and "within" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs within". 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 #1,147,697 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.