Which to use
“fault” is a noun and “faulted” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #2,296
- “fault” frequency rank
- #40,692
- “faulted” frequency rank
- 42988
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | fault | faulted |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Culpability; the responsibility for a blameworthy event. | simple past and past participle of fault |
Letter map: fault vs faulted
Shared letters muted; letters that set fault and faulted apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. fault runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against faulted's 7 (CVVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for fault / faulted
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fault is anoun and faultedaverb. On the page they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “fault” sits inside “faulted”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 42988, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
fault is recorded at frequency rank #2,296, classified as anoun, pronounced /fɔːlt/. faulted is at rank #40,692, tagged as averb.
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 42988, this pair ranks #244,250 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of fault vs faulted
Shared letters: afltu. Private to "fault": -. Private to "faulted": de.
"fault" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC · "faulted" · 7 letters · shape CVVCCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "fault" and "faulted" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "fault" or "faulted"?
What to do next
You've compared "fault" and "faulted". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "fault" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "faulted" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #244,250 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "fault" and "faulted" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "faulted vs fluted". 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 #244,250 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.