fievsfoieWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: fie is a intj, foie is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fie” is an intj and “foie” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#45,929
“fie” frequency rank
#42,645
“foie” frequency rank
88574
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fie foie
Definition Sometimes followed by on or upon: used to express distaste, disgust, or outrage. Ellipsis of foie gras.

Letter map: fie vs foie

Shared letters muted; letters that set fie and foie apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. fie runs 3 letters (CVV) against foie's 4 (CVVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
fie
4 ch
foie

Part-of-speech tell for fie / foie

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fie is anintj and foieanoun. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 88574, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fie is recorded at frequency rank #45,929, classified as anintj, pronounced /faɪ/. foie is at rank #42,645, 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 88574, this pair ranks #6,168 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fie vs foie

Shared letters: efi. Private to "fie": -. Private to "foie": o.

"fie" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "foie" · 4 letters · shape CVVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foie ← ffoie · fioe · foei · ofie

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "fie" and "foie" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fie" is an intj and "foie" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "fie" vs "foie" - which ranks higher?
"foie" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,645 in our English list, against #45,929 for "fie". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

You've compared "fie" and "foie". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foie" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #6,168 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fie" and "foie" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fie vs foh". 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 #6,168 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list