federalvslooksWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: federal is a adjective, looks is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#21,247
“federal” frequency rank
#28,298
“looks” frequency rank
49545
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature federal looks
Definition föderativ Plural des Substantivs look

Letter map: federal vs looks

Shared letters muted; letters that set federal and looks apart highlighted. Shared run: 1. federal runs 7 letters (CVCVCVC) against looks's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
federal
5 ch
looks

Part-of-speech tell for federal / looks

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: federal is anadjective and looksanoun. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49545, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

federal is recorded at frequency rank #21,247, classified as anadj, pronounced […]. looks is at rank #28,298, tagged as anoun, pronounced […].

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 49545, this pair ranks #1,207,465 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of federal vs looks

Shared letters: l. Private to "federal": adefr. Private to "looks": kos.

"federal" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCVC  ·  "looks" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • federalefderal · fdeeral · fedderal · fedearl · federall · federla · federral · fedreal
  • looksllooks · lokos · lookks · lookss · loosk · oloks

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "federal" for "looks" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "federal" is an adjective and "looks" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "federal" vs "looks" - which ranks higher?
"federal" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,247 in our German list, against #28,298 for "looks". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "federal" and "looks".

  • Full dictionary entry for "federal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "looks" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,207,465 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "federal" and "looks" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "looks 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 #1,207,465 of 2,006,359 scored German pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list