Which to use
“fecal” is an adjective and “feces” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #28,545
- “fecal” frequency rank
- #21,795
- “feces” frequency rank
- 50340
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | fecal | feces |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Of or relating to feces. | Digested waste material (typically solid or semi-solid) discharged from a human or other mammal's stomach to the intestines; excrement. |
Where the eye mixes fecal and feces
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. fecal and feces follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Look-alike desk: fecal vs feces
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: fecal is /ˈfiːkəl/ while feces is /ˈfiːsiːz/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adjective vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50340, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
fecal is recorded at frequency rank #28,545, classified as anadj, pronounced /ˈfiːkəl/. feces is at rank #21,795, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈfiːsiːz/.
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 50340, this pair ranks #175,209 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of fecal vs feces
Shared letters: cef. Private to "fecal": al. Private to "feces": s.
"fecal" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC · "feces" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "fecal" and "feces" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "fecal" vs "feces" - which ranks higher?
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 "fecal" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "feces" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #175,209 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "fecal" and "feces" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fecal vs foetal". 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 #175,209 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.