Which to use
“food” and “foot” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #386
- “food” frequency rank
- #1,426
- “foot” frequency rank
- 1812
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | food | foot |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Any solid substance that can be consumed by living organisms, especially by eating, in order to sustain life. | 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 food and foot
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence.
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
A purely visual mix-up. food (/fuːd/) 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 a single letter - d in “food” becomes t in “foot”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 1812, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
food is recorded at frequency rank #386, classified as anoun, pronounced /fuːd/. 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 1812, this pair ranks #526,595 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of food vs foot
Shared letters: fo. Private to "food": d. Private to "foot": t.
"food" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "foot" · 4 letters · shape CVVC