fastvsFETWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#767
“fast” frequency rank
#40,696
“FET” frequency rank
41463
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fast FET
Definition Firmly or securely fixed in place; stable. Ellipsis of FET y de las JONS, a political party in Francoist Spain.

Letter map: fast vs FET

Shared letters muted; letters that set fast and FET apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
fast
3 ch
FET

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fast is anadjective and FETaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 41463, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fast is recorded at frequency rank #767, classified as anadj, pronounced /fɑːst/. FET is at rank #40,696, 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 41463, this pair ranks #258,159 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fast vs FET

Shared letters: ft. Private to "fast": as. Private to "FET": e.

"fast" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "FET" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fastafst · fasst · fastt · ffast · fsat

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "fast" and "FET" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fast" is an adjective and "FET" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "fast" or "FET"?
"fast" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #767 in our English list, against #40,696 for "FET". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list