foievsfoodConfusable pair

Which to use

“foie” and “food” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#42,645
“foie” frequency rank
#386
“food” frequency rank
43031
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foie food
Definition Ellipsis of foie gras. Any solid substance that can be consumed by living organisms, especially by eating, in order to sustain life.

Letter map: foie vs food

Shared letters muted; letters that set foie and food apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. foie (CVVV) and food (CVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

4 ch
foie
4 ch
food

Corpus notes: foie and food

foie and food are indexed as a confusable English pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43031, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foie is recorded at frequency rank #42,645, classified as anoun. food is at rank #386, tagged as anoun, pronounced /fuːd/.

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 43031, this pair ranks #243,856 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foie vs food

Shared letters: fo. Private to "foie": ei. Private to "food": d.

"foie" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "food" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foie ← ffoie · fioe · foei · ofie
  • food ← ffood · fod · fodo · foodd · ofod

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "foie" and "food" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Frequency check: "foie" vs "food" - which ranks higher?
"food" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #386 in our English list, against #42,645 for "foie". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Pair "foie" vs "food" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foie" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "food" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #243,856 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foie" and "food" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foie vs FOMO". 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 #243,856 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