fearsvsfeastWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#5,416
“fears” frequency rank
#7,689
“feast” frequency rank
13105
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fears feast
Definition plural of fear A holiday, festival, especially a religious one

Where the eye mixes fears and feast

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

5 ch
fears
5 ch
feast

Visual trap between fears and feast

A purely visual mix-up. fears (/fɪəz/) and feast (/fiːst/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13105, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fears is recorded at frequency rank #5,416, classified as anoun, pronounced /fɪəz/. feast is at rank #7,689, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fiːst/.

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 13105, this pair ranks #477,742 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of fears vs feast

Shared letters: aefs. Private to "fears": r. Private to "feast": t.

"fears" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "feast" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fearsefars · faers · fearrs · fearss · feasr · feras · ffears
  • feastefast · faest · feasst · feastt · feats · fesat · ffeast

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "fears" and "feast" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/fɪəz/ versus /fiːst/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "fears" or "feast"?
"fears" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,416 in our English list, against #7,689 for "feast". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Eye-level mix-up between "fears" and "feast" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fears" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "feast" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #477,742 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fears" and "feast" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fars vs fears". 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 #477,742 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