Between and Among

Here we are again with another interesting topic to speak about. In this article, we are going to speak about between the words between and among. As you can see I used the preposition between because we want to talk about two distinct words, so that is exactly when we use the word between when we want to speak about two people, places, or objects.

Example: I can’t decide between the red and blue shirt.

As you can see we have a choice of two colors in the shop to decide, so we use between.
But when we do we the preposition among? When we want to refer to more than two objects or people we use the word among. Let’s have a look at the same example with applying among.

Example: I can’t decide among these shirts.
You can understand that you have more than two options to choose from.

Example: fear spread among the hostage when they heard the gunfire.

Again you can see that in the example we are speaking about a group of people, so among is the option to use.

Attention:
Example: There is an argument between Alex, James, and John.
Example: I am confused between the counties Italy, Spain and Germany.

Now you might ask yourself that in this sentence we have used three names but still, we use between. Why?

When you are talking about one-to-one correspondent and taking the names individually in this case we use between instead of among. As well in the second example, we have mentioned the names of countries one by one.
Also among and between have different usages, which is useful for daily speaking situations. Here are some examples of them.

Usage 1

One of the most practical usages of between and among is to distinguish location and direction.

Example1: John walked between the trees.
Example2: John walked among the trees.

the first sentence gives us an idea that john has a defined path which was surrounded only by the trees so he walked between the trees, whereas in the second example we might get the idea that he wasn’t sure about his path and just wondering between trees.

Usage 2

We often use between to make comparisons. Look at the following example:
There are many differences between lions and elephants.

Usage 3

We use only between to connect numbers, dates, and time.
I go swimming between two and three-time per week.
I lived in Madrid between 2000 and 2003.
I was in class between 3p.m and 5 p.m.

Attention:
These nouns often come before between: connection, link, relationship, and difference.

Is there a connection between you and my sister?
There is a strong link between smoking and cancer.

Among and amongst

You might also confront the word amongst as well. Don’t panic it is not a big deal. They are the same and they have the same meaning and we can use them interchangeably.
However amongst is more kind of old English and they are being used in books more, on the other hand, among is more modern and preferably being used in daily conversations.