FestvsfestemTell them apart

Quick tell: Fest is a noun, festem is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#542
“Fest” frequency rank
#27,721
“festem” frequency rank
28263
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Fest festem
Definition größere Feier Dativ Singular Maskulinum der starken Deklination des Positivs des Adjektivs fest

Where the eye mixes Fest and festem

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

4 ch
Fest
6 ch
festem

Look-alike desk: Fest vs festem

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Fest is [fɛst] while festem is [ˈfɛstəm]. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “Fest” sits inside “festem”, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 28263, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Fest is recorded at frequency rank #542, classified as anoun, pronounced [fɛst]. festem is at rank #27,721, tagged as anadj, pronounced [ˈfɛstəm].

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 28263, this pair ranks #1,787,841 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of Fest vs festem

Shared letters: efst. Private to "Fest": -. Private to "festem": m.

"Fest" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "festem" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Festefst · fesst · festt · fets · ffest · fset
  • festemefstem · fesetm · fesstem · festemm · festme · festtem · fetsem · ffestem

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "Fest" and "festem" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Fest" is a noun and "festem" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary German text, does "Fest" or "festem" show up more?
"Fest" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #542 in our German list, against #27,721 for "festem". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "Fest" and "festem" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Fest" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "festem" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #1,787,841 of 2,006,359 scored German confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Fest" and "festem" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fessel vs festem". 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 #1,787,841 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