fae
"fae" is a 3-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fae” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #34,882) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #34,882
- frequency rank, English
- 2,507
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Alternative spelling of fey (“magical, fairylike”).
Corpus desk
Index EN-fae · fae · English
fae · rank #34,882 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #34,882
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 2,507
- PHOTO-FINISH Falkland
Nearest frequency peer: Falkland (+1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Frequency neighbours of confusable “fae”
Peers at similar corpus weight, separate from look-alike pairs below
- excelsior
excelsior
65,122 corpus weight
- exploitative
exploitative
65,121 corpus weight
- fae
fae
65,119 corpus weight
- Falkland
Falkland
65,118 corpus weight
- Fatah
Fatah
65,117 corpus weight
- FDIC
FDIC
65,116 corpus weight
What this shows Bars place “fae” against nearest ranked English headwords, not a reprint of the confusable-pair desk.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fae |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #34,882 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Corpus rank beside confusables of “fae”
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for fae is neighbouring look-alikes ("fi", "FL", …), not just typos; it is anadjective. Frequency #34,882 among 2,507 “F” headwords. Gloss: "Alternative spelling of fey (“magical, fairylike”).".
Zero misspellings are on record for fae in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fi", "FL", "FM", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Old French fae, from Medieval Latin fāda. The use of the pronoun appears c. 2013. The correct English form is fae, spelled F-A-E.
Definition
- 1Alternative spelling of fey (“magical, fairylike”).
Etymology
From Old French fae, from Medieval Latin fāda. The use of the pronoun appears c. 2013.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "fae", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).