taking vs TO, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#47,767
“taking” frequency rank: #589
“TO” frequency rank: 48356
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	taking	TO
Definition	Partizip Präsens (present participle) des Verbs take	KFZ-Kennzeichen für Torino (Turin)

Letter map: taking vs TO

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

6 ch

taking

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for taking / TO

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: taking is averb and TOanabbrev. On the page they differ by 4 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 48356, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

taking is recorded at frequency rank #47,767, 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 48356, this pair ranks #1,251,554 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of taking vs TO

Shared letters: t. Private to "taking": agikn. Private to "TO": o.

"taking" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC · "TO" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

taking ← atking · taikng · takign · takingg · takinng · takking · taknig · tkaing

Frequently Asked Questions

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

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

Which is more common, "taking" or "TO"?

"TO" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #589 in our German list, against #47,767 for "taking". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

Full dictionary entry for "taking" 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 #1,251,554 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"taking" and "TO" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs taking". 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 #1,251,554 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.