foi vs fou, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“foi” is a noun and “fou” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#42,644
“foi” frequency rank: #48,244
“fou” frequency rank: 90888
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	foi	fou
Definition	A depiction of a handshake.	Drunk.

Letter map: foi vs fou

Shared letters muted; letters that set foi and fou apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. foi and fou follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

3 ch

foi

3 ch

fou

Grammar separator: foi vs fou

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foi is anoun and fouanadjective. On the page they differ by a single letter - i in “foi” becomes u in “fou”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 90888, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foi is recorded at frequency rank #42,644, classified as anoun. 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 90888, this pair ranks #3,788 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of foi vs fou

Shared letters: fo. Private to "foi": i. Private to "fou": u.

"foi" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "fou" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foi" for "fou" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foi" is a noun and "fou" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

Which is more common, "foi" or "fou"?

"foi" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #42,644 in our English list, against #48,244 for "fou". 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 "foi" and "fou". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "foi" 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 #3,788 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"foi" and "fou" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "FOMO vs fou". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #3,788 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.