foievsfoyerTell them apart

Which to use

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

#42,645
“foie” frequency rank
#25,764
“foyer” frequency rank
68409
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foie foyer
Definition Ellipsis of foie gras. A lobby, corridor, or waiting room, used in a hotel, theater, etc.

Letter map: foie vs foyer

Shared letters muted; letters that set foie and foyer apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. foie runs 4 letters (CVVV) against foyer's 5 (CVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
foie
5 ch
foyer

Corpus notes: foie and foyer

foie and foyer 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 differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 68409, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foie is recorded at frequency rank #42,645, classified as anoun. foyer is at rank #25,764, tagged as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɔɪ.eɪ/.

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 68409, this pair ranks #59,000 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of foie vs foyer

Shared letters: efo. Private to "foie": i. Private to "foyer": ry.

"foie" · 4 letters · shape CVVV  ·  "foyer" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foie ← ffoie · fioe · foei · ofie
  • foyer ← ffoyer · foeyr · foyerr · foyre · foyyer · fyoer · ofyer

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "foie" and "foyer" be used interchangeably?
No. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
In ordinary English text, does "foie" or "foyer" show up more?
"foyer" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #25,764 in our English list, against #42,645 for "foie". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "foie" vs "foyer" 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 "foyer" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #59,000 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foie" and "foyer" 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 #59,000 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