Which to use
“felt” is a noun and “fill” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #770
- “felt” frequency rank
- #2,297
- “fill” frequency rank
- 3067
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | felt | fill |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | 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. | To make full |
Where the eye mixes felt and fill
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: felt is /ˈfɛlt/ while fill is /fɪl/. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3067, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
felt is recorded at frequency rank #770, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɛlt/. fill is at rank #2,297, tagged as averb, pronounced /fɪl/.
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 3067, this pair ranks #523,211 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of felt vs fill
Shared letters: fl. Private to "felt": et. Private to "fill": i.
"felt" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "fill" · 4 letters · shape CVCC