Which to use
“foes” is a noun and “fou” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #16,472
- “foes” frequency rank
- #48,244
- “fou” frequency rank
- 64716
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | foes | fou |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | plural of foe | Drunk. |
Letter map: foes vs fou
Shared letters muted; letters that set foes and fou apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. foes runs 4 letters (CVVC) against fou's 3 (CVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Part-of-speech tell for foes / fou
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foes is anoun and fouanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 64716, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
foes is recorded at frequency rank #16,472, classified as anoun, pronounced /fəʊz/. fou is at rank #48,244, tagged as anadj.
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 64716, this pair ranks #76,302 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of foes vs fou
Shared letters: fo. Private to "foes": es. Private to "fou": u.
"foes" · 4 letters · shape CVVC · "fou" · 3 letters · shape CVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- foes ← feos · ffoes · foess · fose · ofes
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "foes" and "fou" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Frequency check: "foes" vs "fou" - which ranks higher?
Useful next steps
You've compared "foes" and "fou". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "foes" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fou" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #76,302 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "foes" and "fou" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "FOMO vs fou". 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 #76,302 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.