fairevsfiléConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#34,275
“faire” frequency rank
#17,797
“filé” frequency rank
52072
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature faire filé
Definition fazer empenho

Letter map: faire vs filé

Shared letters muted; letters that set faire and filé apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. faire runs 5 letters (CVVCV) against filé's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
faire
4 ch
filé

Part-of-speech tell for faire / filé

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: faire is averb and filéanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 52072, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

faire is recorded at frequency rank #34,275, classified as averb, pronounced \fɛʁ\. filé is at rank #17,797, tagged as anoun.

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 52072, this pair ranks #13,061 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of faire vs filé

Shared letters: fi. Private to "faire": aer. Private to "filé": lé.

"faire" · 5 letters · shape CVVCV  ·  "filé" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • faire ← afire · faier · fairre · farie · ffaire · fiare

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "faire" for "filé" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "faire" is a verb and "filé" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "faire" vs "filé" - which ranks higher?
"filé" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17,797 in our Portuguese list, against #34,275 for "faire". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "faire" and "filé". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "faire" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "filé" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #13,061 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "faire" and "filé" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "faia vs faire". 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 #13,061 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