faith
/feɪθ/
"faith" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“faith” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #1,597 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #1,597
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence.
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 | faith |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /feɪθ/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #1,597 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “faith” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for faith is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /feɪθ/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,597 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for faith, with forms such as "afith", "faiht", and "faithh". Each of these forms differs from the correct spelling by one small edit: a doubled letter, a dropped silent letter, or a substituted vowel. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "fit", "fat", "fast", and more, a pairing that trips writers up because the two words share enough sound or shape to blur together.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English faith (also fay), borrowed from Old French fei, feid, from Latin fidem. Displaced native Old English ġelēafa, which was also a word for belief. * Old French had [θ] as a final devoiced allophone of /ð/ from lenited Latin /d/; this eventu… The correct English form is faith, spelled F-A-I-T-H.
Definition
- 1A trust or confidence in the intentions or abilities of a person, object, or ideal from prior empirical evidence.
- 2A conviction about abstractions, ideas, or beliefs, without empirical evidence, experience, or observation.
- 3A religious or spiritual belief system.
- 4An obligation of loyalty or fidelity and the observance of such an obligation.
- 5Credibility or truth.
Etymology
From Middle English faith (also fay), borrowed from Old French fei, feid, from Latin fidem. Displaced native Old English ġelēafa, which was also a word for belief. * Old French had [θ] as a final devoiced allophone of /ð/ from lenited Latin /d/; this eventually fell silent in the 12th century. The -th of the Middle English forms is most straightforwardly accounted for as a direct borrowing of a French [θ]. However, it has also been seen as arising from alteration of a French form with -d under influence of English abstract nouns in the suffix -th (e.g., truth, ruth, health, etc.), or as a recharacterization of a French form like fay, fey, fei with the same suffix. Compare Champenois fiate, fiaite, showing the same preservation of the final consonant.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: afith,faiht,faithh,faitth,fatih,ffaith,fiath
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of faith - counted as single-character edits (an insertion, a deletion, or a substituted letter). The larger the bar, the easier the typo is to spot; one-edit slips are the ones that sneak past readers.
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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Using “faith”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is F-A-I-T-H - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /feɪθ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “fit” - see the side-by-side comparison. faith vs fit
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.