fata vs fatale, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“fata” is a noun and “fatale” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,920
“fata” frequency rank: #24,712
“fatale” frequency rank: 70632
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	fata	fatale
Definition	die Fee	Nominativ Singular Femininum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs fatal

Letter map: fata vs fatale

Shared letters muted; letters that set fata and fatale apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

4 ch

fata

6 ch

fatale

Part-of-speech tell for fata / fatale

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fata is anoun and fataleanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “fata” sits inside “fatale”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 70632, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fata is recorded at frequency rank #45,920, classified as anoun, pronounced […]. fatale is at rank #24,712, tagged as anadj, pronounced [faˈtaːlə].

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 70632, this pair ranks #440,407 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fata vs fatale

Shared letters: aft. Private to "fata": -. Private to "fatale": el.

"fata" · 4 letters · shape CVCV · "fatale" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

fata ← afta · faat · fatta · ffata · ftaa
fatale ← aftale · faatle · fatael · fatalle · fatlae · fattale · ffatale · ftaale

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "fata" and "fatale" mean the same thing in a sentence?

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

In ordinary German text, does "fata" or "fatale" show up more?

"fatale" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #24,712 in our German list, against #45,920 for "fata". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "fata" vs "fatale" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

Full dictionary entry for "fata" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "fatale" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #440,407 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"fata" and "fatale" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fata vs puzzles". 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 #440,407 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.