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PlainSpell

faith

/feɪθ/noun

faith is a noun meaning “A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-A-I-T-H and has one syllable, and it appears 66 times per million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Faith, the name). The plural of faith is faiths.

What does faith mean?

noun

  1. 1

    A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence.

    The faithfulness of Old Faithful gives us faith in it.

  2. 2

    A conviction about abstractions, ideas, or beliefs, without empirical evidence, experience, or observation.

    I have faith that my prayers will be answered.

  3. 3

    A religious or spiritual belief system.

    The Christian faith.

  4. 4

    An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.

    He acted in good faith to restore broken diplomatic ties after defeating the incumbent.

  5. 5

    obsoleteCredibility or truth.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce faith?

  • /feɪθ/

Faith has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-faith.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Forms of faith

  • faiths plural

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is faith?

Faith appears 66 times per million words in written English, the 1,602nd most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Faith, the name.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Words people confuse with faith

Also written: in faith.

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Faith in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchfoi (feeling that something is true), confiance (confidence in the intentions or abilities)
GermanGlaube (feeling that something is true), Vertrauen (confidence in the intentions or abilities)
Portuguesefé (feeling that something is true)
Spanishfe (feeling that something is true), confianza (confidence in the intentions or abilities)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does faith come from?

From Middle English faith (also fay), borrowed from Old French fei, feid, from Latin fidem. Doublet of foy. Displaced native Old English ġelēafa, which was also a word for belief.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).