atvsavConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#21
“at” frequency rank
#12,373
“av” frequency rank
12394
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature at av
Definition In, near, or in the general vicinity of (a particular place). have

Letter map: at vs av

Shared letters muted; letters that set at and av apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

2 ch
at
2 ch
av

Part-of-speech tell for at / av

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: at is apreposition and avaverb. On the page they differ by a single letter - t in “at” becomes v in “av”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 12394, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

at is recorded at frequency rank #21, classified as aprep, pronounced /æt/. av is at rank #12,373, tagged as averb.

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 12394, this pair ranks #481,819 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of at vs av

Shared letters: a. Private to "at": t. Private to "av": v.

"at" · 2 letters · shape VC  ·  "av" · 2 letters · shape VC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "at" for "av" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "at" is a preposition and "av" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "at" or "av" show up more?
"at" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21 in our English list, against #12,373 for "av". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "at" vs "av" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "at" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "av" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #481,819 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "at" and "av" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "amb vs av". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #481,819 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list