Which to use
“food” is a noun and “fooled” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #386
- “food” frequency rank
- #12,980
- “fooled” frequency rank
- 13366
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | food | fooled |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Any solid substance that can be consumed by living organisms, especially by eating, in order to sustain life. | simple past and past participle of fool |
Where the eye mixes food and fooled
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.
Look-alike desk: food vs fooled
These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: food is /fuːd/ while fooled is /fuːld/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 2 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 13366, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
food is recorded at frequency rank #386, classified as anoun, pronounced /fuːd/. fooled is at rank #12,980, tagged as averb, pronounced /fuːld/.
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 13366, this pair ranks #476,245 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of food vs fooled
Shared letters: dfo. Private to "food": -. Private to "fooled": el.
"food" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "fooled" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "food" and "fooled" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "food" or "fooled"?
Useful next steps
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "food" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fooled" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #476,245 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "food" and "fooled" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fooled vs Foyle". 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 #476,245 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.