fakervsfakesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“faker” and “fakes” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#36,554
“faker” frequency rank
#21,513
“fakes” frequency rank
58067
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature faker fakes
Definition One who fakes something. plural of fake

Where the eye mixes faker and fakes

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. faker and fakes follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
faker
5 ch
fakes

Why the eye confuses faker with fakes

A purely visual mix-up. faker (/ˈfeɪkɚ/) and fakes (/feɪks/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by a single letter - r in “faker” becomes s in “fakes”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 58067, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

faker is recorded at frequency rank #36,554, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈfeɪkɚ/. fakes is at rank #21,513, tagged as anoun, pronounced /feɪks/.

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 58067, this pair ranks #115,048 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of faker vs fakes

Shared letters: aefk. Private to "faker": r. Private to "fakes": s.

"faker" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "fakes" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • faker ← afker · faekr · fakerr · fakker · fakre · ffaker · fkaer
  • fakes ← afkes · faeks · fakess · fakkes · fakse · ffakes · fkaes

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "faker" for "fakes" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/ˈfeɪkɚ/ versus /feɪks/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "faker" or "fakes"?
"fakes" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #21,513 in our English list, against #36,554 for "faker". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "faker" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fakes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #115,048 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "faker" and "fakes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "faker vs flaked". 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 #115,048 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list