findvsfledWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#169
“find” frequency rank
#6,573
“fled” frequency rank
6742
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature find fled
Definition To locate simple past and past participle of flee

Where the eye mixes find and fled

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

4 ch
find
4 ch
fled

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. find (/faɪnd/) and fled (/ˈflɛd/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 6742, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

find is recorded at frequency rank #169, classified as averb, pronounced /faɪnd/. fled is at rank #6,573, tagged as averb, pronounced /ˈflɛd/.

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 6742, this pair ranks #510,170 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of find vs fled

Shared letters: df. Private to "find": in. Private to "fled": el.

"find" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "fled" · 4 letters · shape CCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • findffind · fidn · findd · finnd · fnid · ifnd
  • fledfeld · ffled · flde · fledd · flled · lfed

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "find" and "fled" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (/faɪnd/ versus /ˈflɛd/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "find" or "fled"?
"find" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #169 in our English list, against #6,573 for "fled". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list