feetvsfreteWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“feet” and “frete” are a confusable Portuguese pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#26,388
“feet” frequency rank
#12,685
“frete” frequency rank
39073
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature feet frete
Definition plural de foot aluguel de embarcação

Where the eye mixes feet and frete

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. feet runs 4 letters (CVVC) against frete's 5 (CCVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
feet
5 ch
frete

Why the eye confuses feet with frete

A purely visual mix-up. feet (/fiːt/) and frete (/ˈfɾɛ.tɨ/) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 39073, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

feet is recorded at frequency rank #26,388, classified as anoun, pronounced /fiːt/. frete is at rank #12,685, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɾɛ.tɨ/.

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 39073, this pair ranks #27,270 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of feet vs frete

Shared letters: eft. Private to "feet": -. Private to "frete": r.

"feet" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "frete" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • feet ← efet · feett · fet · fete · ffeet
  • frete ← ferte · ffrete · freet · frette · frrete · frtee · rfete

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "feet" for "frete" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (/fiːt/ versus /ˈfɾɛ.tɨ/) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "feet" vs "frete" - which ranks higher?
"frete" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #12,685 in our Portuguese list, against #26,388 for "feet". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "feet" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "frete" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #27,270 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "feet" and "frete" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "feet vs fern". 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 #27,270 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