feastvsflatWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: feast is a noun, flat is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“feast” is a noun and “flat” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,689
“feast” frequency rank
#1,941
“flat” frequency rank
9630
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature feast flat
Definition A holiday, festival, especially a religious one Having no variations in height.

Where the eye mixes feast and flat

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.

5 ch
feast
4 ch
flat

Why the eye confuses feast with flat

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: feast is /fiːst/ while flat is /flæt/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9630, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

feast is recorded at frequency rank #7,689, classified as anoun, pronounced /fiːst/. flat is at rank #1,941, tagged as anadj, pronounced /flæt/.

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 9630, this pair ranks #496,397 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of feast vs flat

Shared letters: aft. Private to "feast": es. Private to "flat": l.

"feast" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "flat" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • feastefast · faest · feasst · feastt · feats · fesat · ffeast
  • flatfalt · fflat · flatt · fllat · flta · lfat

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "feast" and "flat" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "feast" is a noun and "flat" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary English text, does "feast" or "flat" show up more?
"flat" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,941 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.

What to do next

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "feast" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "flat" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #496,397 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "feast" and "flat" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fealty vs feast". 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 #496,397 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