withinvsyearsTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#29,872
“within” frequency rank
#13,282
“years” frequency rank
43154
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature within years
Definition innerhalb, in Plural des Substantivs year

Letter map: within vs years

Shared letters muted; letters that set within and years apart highlighted. No shared letter run.

6 ch
within
5 ch
years

Role in the sentence - within and years

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: within is apreposition and yearsanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43154, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

within is recorded at frequency rank #29,872, classified as aprep, pronounced […]. years is at rank #13,282, tagged as anoun, 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 43154, this pair ranks #1,426,976 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of within vs years

Shared letters: none. Private to "within": hintw. Private to "years": aersy.

"within" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC  ·  "years" · 5 letters · shape VVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • withiniwthin · wihtin · withhin · withinn · withni · witihn · witthin · wtihin
  • yearseyars · yaers · yearrs · yearss · yeasr · yeras · yyears

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "within" and "years" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "within" is a preposition and "years" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "within" or "years" show up more?
"years" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #13,282 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.

What to do next

You've compared "within" and "years". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "within" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "years" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,426,976 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "within" and "years" 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 #1,426,976 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