feu vs few, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“feu” is a noun and “few” is a determiner - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,641
“feu” frequency rank: #226
“few” frequency rank: 43867
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	feu	few
Definition	Land held in feudal tenure.	An indefinite, but usually small, number of.

Same sound, different letters: feu vs few

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 2 letters.

3 ch

feu

3 ch

few

Homophone desk: feu vs few

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: feu and few carry the same recorded pronunciation, /fjuː/. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other adeterminer, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by a single letter - u in “feu” becomes w in “few”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43867, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

feu is recorded at frequency rank #43,641, classified as anoun, pronounced /fjuː/. few is at rank #226, tagged as adet, pronounced /fjuː/.

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 43867, this pair ranks #235,942 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of feu vs few

Shared letters: ef. Private to "feu": u. Private to "few": w.

"feu" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "few" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "feu" for "few" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "feu" is a noun and "few" a determiner, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary English text, does "feu" or "few" show up more?

"few" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #226 in our English list, against #43,641 for "feu". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've separated the homophone pair "feu" / "few". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

Full dictionary entry for "feu" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "few" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #235,942 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"feu" and "few" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "feu vs foh". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #235,942 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.