shows vs TO, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#8,130
“shows” frequency rank: #589
“TO” frequency rank: 8719
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	shows	TO
Definition	3. Person Singular Indikativ Präsens Aktiv des Verbs show	KFZ-Kennzeichen für Torino (Turin)

Letter map: shows vs TO

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

5 ch

shows

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for shows / TO

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: shows is averb and TOanabbrev. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 8719, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

shows is recorded at frequency rank #8,130, classified as averb, 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 8719, this pair ranks #1,983,124 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of shows vs TO

Shared letters: o. Private to "shows": hsw. Private to "TO": t.

"shows" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC · "TO" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

shows ← hsows · shhows · shosw · showss · showws · shwos · sohws · sshows

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

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

"TO" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #589 in our German list, against #8,130 for "shows". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "shows" and "TO". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "shows" 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 #1,983,124 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"shows" and "TO" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs shows". 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 #1,983,124 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.