fate
/feɪt/
"fate" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“fate” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #3,880 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #3,880
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The presumed cause, force, principle, or divine will that predetermines events.
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 | fate |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /feɪt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #3,880 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “fate” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for fate is 4 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /feɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #3,880 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for fate, with forms such as "afte", "faet", and "fatte". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Fe", "fit", "fee", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English fate, from Latin fāta (“prediction”), plural of fātum, from fātus (“spoken”), from for (“to speak”). In this sense, displaced native Old English wyrd, whence Modern English weird. The correct English form is fate, spelled F-A-T-E.
Definition
- 1The presumed cause, force, principle, or divine will that predetermines events.
- 2The effect, consequence, outcome, or inevitable events predetermined by this cause.
- 3An event or a situation which is inevitable in the fullness of time.
- 4Destiny; often with a connotation of death, ruin, misfortune, etc.
- 5Alternative letter-case form of Fate (one of the goddesses said to control the destiny of human beings).
- 6The products of a chemical reaction in their final form in the biosphere.
- 7The mature endpoint of a region, group of cells or individual cell in an embryo, including all changes leading to that mature endpoint
Etymology
From Middle English fate, from Latin fāta (“prediction”), plural of fātum, from fātus (“spoken”), from for (“to speak”). In this sense, displaced native Old English wyrd, whence Modern English weird.
Synonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: afte,faet,fatte,ffate,ftae
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of fate - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
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 “fate”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is F-A-T-E - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /feɪt/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “Fe” - see the side-by-side comparison. fate vs Fe
- 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.