Confident is how you feel on a good hair day, but a confidant is the person you tell when you're secretly wearing a wig. It's no wonder that these words are so easily confused: they were once both confident.

If you're looking and feeling good, you're confident. Confident is a feeling of self-reliance or of certainty about something. It comes from Middle French, confident, which in turn comes from Latin, cōnfidentem, meaning "trusting or bold." If you're not confident, you turn tail and go home. Hold your head up high to read these confident  examples:

A confidant, with an a, is the person you trust to spill your guts to. It also comes from the French confident, which came from the Latin confidente, for "a trusted friend." Confidante has been used to refer to a female trusted friend, parallel to the French confidente, but that usage has fallen largely out of favor as an unnecessary feminine version, like authoress. You can add that e if you want, either way say it with a sultry French accent:

Try remembering that if you are confident, the person you believe in is "me." If you have a confidant, you are putting your trust in another. If you're confident your friend won't tell all your business, she can be your confidant.