fact
/fækt/noun, interjection
fact is spelled F-A-C-T. The wrong spelling people search most is fatc: about 60 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 68 of all searches for the word. Fact is a noun meaning “Something actual as opposed to invented”. The plural of fact is facts.
How many letters and syllables are in fact?
| Letters | 4: F-A-C-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 257 times per million words; the 373rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, fatc, about 60 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell fact?
Fact is spelled F-A-C-T. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 68 of the searches for fact in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is fact?
Fact appears 257 times per million words in written English, the 373rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce fact?
- /fækt/
Fact has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-fact.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of fact
- facts plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does fact mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
Something actual as opposed to invented.
establish the facts
- 2
Something which is real.
Gravity is a fact, not a theory.
- 3
Something concrete used as a basis for further interpretation.
Let's look at the facts of the case before deciding.
- 4
An objective consensus on a fundamental reality that has been agreed upon by a substantial number of experts.
There is no doubting the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
- 5
Information about a particular subject, especially actual conditions and/or circumstances.
The facts about space travel.
- 6
An individual value or measurement at the lowest level of granularity in a data warehouse.
- 7
archaicAction; the realm of action.
- 8
A wrongful or criminal deed.
He had become an accessory after the fact.
interjection
- 1
Used before making a statement to introduce it as a trustworthy one.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Fact in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | fait, vérité |
| German | Tatsache, Fakt , Wirklichkeit |
| Portuguese | fato, facto |
| Spanish | hecho, facto , fecho |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does fact come from?
From Old French fact, from Latin factum (“an act, deed, feat, etc.”); also Medieval Latin for “state, condition, circumstance”; neuter of factus (“done or made”), perfect passive participle of faciō (“do, make”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place, set”). Old/Middle French later evolved it into faict and fait. Doublet of feat.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).