faultyvsFaustWhich spelling fits?

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

Which to use

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

#12,596
“faulty” frequency rank
#26,419
“Faust” frequency rank
39015
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature faulty Faust
Definition Having or displaying faults; not perfect; not adequate or acceptable. A magician and alchemist of German lore who sold his soul to the Devil for knowledge and power.

Letter map: faulty vs Faust

Shared letters muted; letters that set faulty and Faust apart highlighted. Shared run: 4. faulty runs 6 letters (CVVCCV) against Faust's 5 (CVVCC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

6 ch
faulty
5 ch
Faust

Part-of-speech tell for faulty / Faust

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: faulty is anadjective and Faustaname. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39015, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

faulty is recorded at frequency rank #12,596, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈfɒlti/. 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 39015, this pair ranks #280,651 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of faulty vs Faust

Shared letters: aftu. Private to "faulty": ly. Private to "Faust": s.

"faulty" · 6 letters · shape CVVCCV  ·  "Faust" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • faultyafulty · faluty · faullty · faultty · faultyy · faulyt · fautly · ffaulty
  • Faustafust · fasut · fausst · faustt · fauts · ffaust · fuast

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "faulty" and "Faust" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "faulty" is an adjective and "Faust" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "faulty" or "Faust"?
"faulty" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,596 in our English list, against #26,419 for "Faust". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "faulty" 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 #280,651 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "faulty" 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 #280,651 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