Which to use
“feels” and “felt” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,338
- “feels” frequency rank
- #770
- “felt” frequency rank
- 2108
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | feels | felt |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | plural of feel, sensory perceptions that mainly or solely involve the sense of touch | A cloth or stuff made of matted fibres of wool, or wool and fur, fulled or wrought into a compact substance by rolling and pressure, with lees or size, without spinning or weaving. |
Where the eye mixes feels and felt
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. feels (/fiːlz/) and felt (/ˈfɛlt/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 2108, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
feels is recorded at frequency rank #1,338, classified as anoun, pronounced /fiːlz/. felt is at rank #770, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɛlt/.
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 2108, this pair ranks #525,841 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of feels vs felt
Shared letters: efl. Private to "feels": s. Private to "felt": t.
"feels" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC · "felt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC