floodvsfootTell them apart

Which to use

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

#4,018
“flood” frequency rank
#1,426
“foot” frequency rank
5444
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature flood foot
Definition An overflow of a large amount of water (usually disastrous) from a lake or other body of water due to excessive rainfall or other input of water. A biological structure found in many animals that is used for locomotion and that is frequently a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg.

Where the eye mixes flood and foot

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. flood runs 5 letters (CCVVC) against foot's 4 (CVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
flood
4 ch
foot

Visual trap between flood and foot

A purely visual mix-up. flood (/flʌd/) and foot (/fʊt/) 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 5444, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

flood is recorded at frequency rank #4,018, classified as anoun, pronounced /flʌd/. foot is at rank #1,426, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fʊt/.

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 5444, this pair ranks #515,312 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of flood vs foot

Shared letters: fo. Private to "flood": dl. Private to "foot": t.

"flood" · 5 letters · shape CCVVC  ·  "foot" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • floodfflood · fllood · flod · flodo · floodd · folod · lfood
  • footffoot · foott · fot · foto · ofot

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "flood" and "foot" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are said differently (/flʌd/ versus /fʊt/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "flood" vs "foot" - which ranks higher?
"foot" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,426 in our English list, against #4,018 for "flood". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "flood" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foot" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #515,312 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "flood" and "foot" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "FOMO vs foot". 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 #515,312 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