withinvswonWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#29,872
“within” frequency rank
#25,404
“won” frequency rank
55276
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature within won
Definition innerhalb, in Präteritum (simple past) des Verbs win

Letter map: within vs won

Shared letters muted; letters that set within and won apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

6 ch
within
3 ch
won

Part-of-speech tell for within / won

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: within is apreposition and wonaverb. On the page they differ by 3 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 55276, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

within is recorded at frequency rank #29,872, classified as aprep, pronounced […]. won is at rank #25,404, tagged as averb, 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 55276, this pair ranks #985,890 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of within vs won

Shared letters: nw. Private to "within": hit. Private to "won": o.

"within" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "won" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • withiniwthin · wihtin · withhin · withinn · withni · witihn · witthin · wtihin

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "within" for "won" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "within" is a preposition and "won" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "within" vs "won" - which ranks higher?
"won" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,404 in our German list, against #29,872 for "within". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "within" vs "won" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "within" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "won" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #985,890 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "within" and "won" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "puzzles vs within". 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 #985,890 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