few vs fur, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#226
“few” frequency rank: #6,789
“fur” frequency rank: 7015
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	few	fur
Definition	An indefinite, but usually small, number of.	The hairy coat of various mammal species, especially when fine, soft and thick.

Where the eye mixes few and fur

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence.

3 ch

few

3 ch

fur

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: few is /fjuː/ while fur is /fɜː/. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (determiner vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 7015, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

few is recorded at frequency rank #226, classified as adet, pronounced /fjuː/. fur is at rank #6,789, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fɜː/.

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 7015, this pair ranks #508,953 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of few vs fur

Shared letters: f. Private to "few": ew. Private to "fur": ru.

"few" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "fur" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "few" and "fur" be used interchangeably?

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

Which is more common, "few" or "fur"?

"few" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #226 in our English list, against #6,789 for "fur". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "few" and "fur". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "few" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "fur" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #508,953 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"few" and "fur" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foh vs fur". Nearby pair

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.