by
[…]
The verdict
“by” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,627) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #1,627
- frequency rank, German
- 5,818
- “B” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Stadt
Corpus desk
Index DE-by · by · German
by · rank #1,627 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #1,627
- LEN-SHORT 2 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-DENSE 5,818
- PHOTO-FINISH Bus
Nearest frequency peer: Bus (-1 rank slots)
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbourhood for “by”
Lower corpus rank = more everyday usage (inverted bar length for readability)
- Bezug
Bezug
98,377 corpus weight
- bilden
bilden
98,376 corpus weight
- Bus
Bus
98,375 corpus weight
- by
by
98,374 corpus weight
- England
England
98,373 corpus weight
- entstanden
entstanden
98,372 corpus weight
What this shows Bars show where “by” sits against the nearest ranked German headwords in the FrequencyWords band, not a reprint of letter-browse containment.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | by |
| Language | German |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | […] |
| Letters | 2 |
| Frequency rank | #1,627 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “by” sits in German frequency
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for by is neighbouring look-alikes ("bye", "Byte", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced […]. Frequency #1,627 among 5,818 “B” headwords. Gloss: "Stadt".
by has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "bye", "Byte", "of", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct German form is by, spelled B-Y.
Definition
- 1Stadt
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 German corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
PlainSpell is rendered directly from structured Wiktionary extracts and open word-frequency lists, no number is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 3, 2026. Primary sources: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) and FrequencyWords.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What to do next
You've looked up "by". Here's where to go from here.
- "by" maps to 20 confusable pairs in this vintage; the highest-scored is "bye". View pair
- Usage frequency rank #1,627 among German headwords in this corpus. Corpus statistics
- Browse more German words in the "B" letter cohort. B–Z browse
PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.