facevsfastConfusable pair

Quick tell: face is a noun, fast is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“face” is a noun and “fast” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#1,395
“face” frequency rank
#8,052
“fast” frequency rank
9447
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature face fast
Definition parte do corpo humano onde se encontram os olhos, nariz e boca quase

Letter map: face vs fast

Shared letters muted; letters that set face and fast apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
face
4 ch
fast

Part-of-speech tell for face / fast

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: face is anoun and fastanadverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 9447, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

face is recorded at frequency rank #1,395, classified as anoun. fast is at rank #8,052, tagged as anadv, pronounced /fast/.

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 9447, this pair ranks #63,982 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of face vs fast

Shared letters: af. Private to "face": ce. Private to "fast": st.

"face" · 4 letters · shape CVCV  ·  "fast" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • faceafce · facce · faec · fcae · fface
  • fastafst · fasst · fastt · fats · ffast · fsat

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "face" and "fast" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "face" is a noun and "fast" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "face" or "fast"?
"face" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,395 in our Portuguese list, against #8,052 for "fast". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "face" and "fast". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "face" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fast" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #63,982 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "face" and "fast" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fast vs fava". 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 #63,982 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list