lookingvsofWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#27,829
“looking” frequency rank
#324
“of” frequency rank
28153
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature looking of
Definition Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs look von

Letter map: looking vs of

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

7 ch
looking
2 ch
of

Role in the sentence - looking and of

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: looking is averb and ofapreposition. On the page they differ by 5 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28153, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

looking is recorded at frequency rank #27,829, classified as averb, 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 28153, this pair ranks #1,789,644 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of looking vs of

Shared letters: o. Private to "looking": gikln. Private to "of": f.

"looking" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC  ·  "of" · 2 letters · shape VC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lookingllooking · loking · lokoing · looikng · lookign · lookingg · lookinng · lookking

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "looking" for "of" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "looking" is a verb and "of" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "looking" vs "of" - which ranks higher?
"of" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #324 in our German list, against #27,829 for "looking". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "looking" and "of".

  • Full dictionary entry for "looking" 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 #1,789,644 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "looking" and "of" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "looking 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 #1,789,644 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