busy vs by, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“busy” is an adjective and “by” is a preposition - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,290
“busy” frequency rank: #1,598
“by” frequency rank: 49888
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	busy	by
Definition	ocupado	por;

Letter map: busy vs by

Shared letters muted; letters that set busy and by apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch

busy

2 ch

Role in the sentence - busy and by

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: busy is anadjective and byapreposition. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49888, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

busy is recorded at frequency rank #48,290, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈbɪzi/. by is at rank #1,598, tagged as aprep.

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 49888, this pair ranks #15,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of busy vs by

Shared letters: by. Private to "busy": su. Private to "by": -.

"busy" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "by" · 2 letters · shape CV

Known mistypes of this pair

busy ← bbusy · bsuy · bussy · busyy · buys · ubsy

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "busy" for "by" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "busy" is an adjective and "by" a preposition, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "busy" or "by"?

"by" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,598 in our Portuguese list, against #48,290 for "busy". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "busy" and "by".

Full dictionary entry for "busy" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "by" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #15,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"busy" and "by" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "bué vs busy". 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 #15,103 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.