feintvsfinWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

“feint” and “fin” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#31,489
“feint” frequency rank
#168
“fin” frequency rank
31657
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature feint fin
Definition Peinture qui imite le marbre. Ce qui termine une chose, en marque la limite, en est l'extrémité.

Same sound, different letters: feint vs fin

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.

5 ch
feint
3 ch
fin

Ear matches; page differs - feint and fin

This is the hard kind. feint and fin are pronounced identically (\fɛ̃\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 31657, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

feint is recorded at frequency rank #31,489, classified as anoun, pronounced \fɛ̃\. fin is at rank #168, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fɛ̃\.

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 31657, this pair ranks #302,422 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of feint vs fin

Shared letters: fin. Private to "feint": et. Private to "fin": -.

"feint" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "fin" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • feintefint · feinnt · feintt · feitn · fenit · ffeint · fient

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "feint" and "fin" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\fɛ̃\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "feint" or "fin" show up more?
"fin" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #168 in our French list, against #31,489 for "feint". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

"feint" and "fin" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "feint" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fin" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #302,422 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "feint" and "fin" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "feint vs foins". 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 #302,422 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