fastvsFaustTell them apart

Quick tell: fast is a adjective, Faust is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fast” is an adjective and “Faust” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#767
“fast” frequency rank
#26,419
“Faust” frequency rank
27186
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fast Faust
Definition Firmly or securely fixed in place; stable. A magician and alchemist of German lore who sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge and power.

Letter map: fast vs Faust

Shared letters muted; letters that set fast and Faust apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

4 ch
fast
5 ch
Faust

Part-of-speech tell for fast / Faust

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fast is anadjective and Faustaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27186, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fast is recorded at frequency rank #767, classified as anadj, pronounced /fɑːst/. Faust is at rank #26,419, tagged as aname.

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 27186, this pair ranks #380,900 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fast vs Faust

Shared letters: afst. Private to "fast": -. Private to "Faust": u.

"fast" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "Faust" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fastafst · fasst · fastt · ffast · fsat
  • Faustafust · fasut · fausst · faustt · fauts · ffaust · fuast

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fast" for "Faust" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fast" is an adjective and "Faust" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "fast" vs "Faust" - which ranks higher?
"fast" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #767 in our English list, against #26,419 for "Faust". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "fast" vs "Faust" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fast" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Faust" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #380,900 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fast" and "Faust" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fars vs Faust". 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 #380,900 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