goodbye vs TO, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#24,369
“goodbye” frequency rank: #589
“TO” frequency rank: 24958
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	goodbye	TO
Definition	auf Wiedersehen	KFZ-Kennzeichen für Torino (Turin)

Letter map: goodbye vs TO

Shared letters muted; letters that set goodbye and TO apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

7 ch

goodbye

2 ch

Role in the sentence - goodbye and TO

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: goodbye is anintj and TOanabbrev. On the page they differ by 5 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24958, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

goodbye is recorded at frequency rank #24,369, classified as anintj, 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 24958, this pair ranks #1,840,160 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of goodbye vs TO

Shared letters: o. Private to "goodbye": bdegy. Private to "TO": t.

"goodbye" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVV · "TO" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

goodbye ← ggoodbye · godbye · godobye · goobdye · goodbbye · goodbey · goodbyye · gooddbye

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "goodbye" and "TO" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "goodbye" is an intj and "TO" an abbrev, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary German text, does "goodbye" or "TO" show up more?

"TO" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #589 in our German list, against #24,369 for "goodbye". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

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

Full dictionary entry for "goodbye" 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 #1,840,160 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"goodbye" and "TO" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "goodbye 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 #1,840,160 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.