# shad vs star

> English confusable word pair

## The two words

### shad
*noun · IPA /ʃæd/ · frequency rank #35,509*
Any one of several species of food fishes that make up the genus Alosa in the family Clupeidae, to which the herrings also belong; river herring.

### star
*noun · IPA /stɑː(ɹ)/ · frequency rank #666*
Any small, natural and bright dot in the sky, most visible in the night or twilight sky. This sense includes the planets, but it is now sometimes used in exclusion of them due to influence from the technical astronomical sense.

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/vs/shad-vs-star