feelsvsfoesConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#1,338
“feels” frequency rank
#16,472
“foes” frequency rank
17810
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature feels foes
Definition plural of feel, sensory perceptions that mainly or solely involve the sense of touch plural of foe

Where the eye mixes feels and foes

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

5 ch
feels
4 ch
foes

Visual trap between feels and foes

A purely visual mix-up. feels (/fiːlz/) and foes (/fəʊz/) 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 17810, 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/. foes is at rank #16,472, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fəʊz/.

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 17810, this pair ranks #448,969 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of feels vs foes

Shared letters: efs. Private to "feels": l. Private to "foes": o.

"feels" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "foes" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • feelsefels · feells · feelss · feesl · feles · fels · ffeels
  • foesfeos · ffoes · foess · fose · ofes

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "feels" and "foes" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/fiːlz/ versus /fəʊz/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "feels" or "foes"?
"feels" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,338 in our English list, against #16,472 for "foes". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "feels" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foes" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #448,969 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "feels" and "foes" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foes vs FOMO". 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 #448,969 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