farevsferaTell them apart

Quick tell: fare is a noun, fera is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fare” is a noun and “fera” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,039
“fare” frequency rank
#875
“fera” frequency rank
45914
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fare fera
Definition Pêche solennelle que les pêcheurs faisaient pour leur fête, vers le mois de mai, et qui fut interdite en 1670, parce qu’elle dépeuplait les rivières. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif futur simple de faire.

Where the eye mixes fare and fera

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. fare and fera follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
fare
4 ch
fera

Visual trap between fare and fera

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: fare is \faʁ\ while fera is \fə.ʁa\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they are an anagram pair: the same letters reordered, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45914, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fare is recorded at frequency rank #45,039, classified as anoun, pronounced \faʁ\. fera is at rank #875, tagged as averb, pronounced \fə.ʁa\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 45914, this pair ranks #199,101 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fare vs fera

Shared letters: aefr. Private to "fare": -. Private to "fera": -.

"fare" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "fera" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fare ← afre · farre · ffare · frae
  • fera ← efra · ferra · ffera · frea

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "fare" and "fera" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fare" is a noun and "fera" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "fare" or "fera"?
"fera" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #875 in our French list, against #45,039 for "fare". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fare" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fera" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #199,101 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fare" and "fera" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fare vs Fee". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #199,101 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list