FogartyvsfortyWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: Fogarty is a name, forty is a num, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Fogarty” is a name and “forty” is a num - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#46,467
“Fogarty” frequency rank
#5,130
“forty” frequency rank
51597
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Fogarty forty
Definition A surname from Irish. The cardinal number occurring after thirty-nine and before forty-one, represented in Roman numerals as XL and in Arabic numerals as 40.

Letter map: Fogarty vs forty

Shared letters muted; letters that set Fogarty and forty apart highlighted. Shared run: 5. Fogarty runs 7 letters (CVCVCCV) against forty's 5 (CVCCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
Fogarty
5 ch
forty

Part-of-speech tell for Fogarty / forty

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: Fogarty is aname and fortyanum. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 51597, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Fogarty is recorded at frequency rank #46,467, classified as aname. forty is at rank #5,130, tagged as anum, pronounced /ˈfɔːti/.

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 51597, this pair ranks #164,141 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of Fogarty vs forty

Shared letters: forty. Private to "Fogarty": ag. Private to "forty": -.

"Fogarty" · 7 letters · shape CVCVCCV  ·  "forty" · 5 letters · shape CVCCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • Fogarty ← ffogarty · fgoarty · foagrty · fogarrty · fogartty · fogartyy · fogaryt · fogatry
  • forty ← fforty · forrty · fortty · fortyy · foryt · fotry · froty · ofrty

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Fogarty" for "forty" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Fogarty" is a name and "forty" a num, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "Fogarty" vs "forty" - which ranks higher?
"forty" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #5,130 in our English list, against #46,467 for "Fogarty". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Pair "Fogarty" vs "forty" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Fogarty" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "forty" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #164,141 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Fogarty" and "forty" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fora vs forty". 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 #164,141 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