FESvsfreesWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: FES is a noun, frees is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“FES” is a noun and “frees” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#39,812
“FES” frequency rank
#22,978
“frees” frequency rank
62790
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature FES frees
Definition Initialism of floppy eyelid syndrome third-person singular simple present indicative of free

Letter map: FES vs frees

Shared letters muted; letters that set FES and frees apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. FES runs 3 letters (CVC) against frees's 5 (CCVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
FES
5 ch
frees

Part-of-speech tell for FES / frees

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: FES is anoun and freesaverb. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 62790, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

FES is recorded at frequency rank #39,812, classified as anoun. frees is at rank #22,978, tagged as averb, pronounced /fɹiːz/.

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 62790, this pair ranks #86,520 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of FES vs frees

Shared letters: efs. Private to "FES": -. Private to "frees": r.

"FES" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "frees" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • frees ← feres · ffrees · freess · fres · frese · frrees · rfees

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "FES" for "frees" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "FES" is a noun and "frees" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "FES" vs "frees" - which ranks higher?
"frees" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,978 in our English list, against #39,812 for "FES". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "FES" vs "frees" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "FES" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "frees" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #86,520 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "FES" and "frees" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "FES vs foh". 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 #86,520 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