lookingvsvideoWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: looking is a verb, video is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#27,829
“looking” frequency rank
#654
“video” frequency rank
28483
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature looking video
Definition Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs look Video-

Letter map: looking vs video

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

7 ch
looking
5 ch
video

Grammar separator: looking vs video

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: looking is averb and videoanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28483, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

looking is recorded at frequency rank #27,829, classified as averb, pronounced […]. video is at rank #654, tagged as anadj, 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 28483, this pair ranks #1,783,943 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of looking vs video

Shared letters: io. Private to "looking": gkln. Private to "video": dev.

"looking" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVCC  ·  "video" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • lookingllooking · loking · lokoing · looikng · lookign · lookingg · lookinng · lookking
  • videoivdeo · vdieo · viddeo · vidoe · viedo · vvideo

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "looking" and "video" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "looking" is a verb and "video" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "looking" vs "video" - which ranks higher?
"video" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #654 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.

After this comparison

Pair "looking" vs "video" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "looking" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "video" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,783,943 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "looking" and "video" 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 #1,783,943 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