fontvsfouWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: font is a noun, fou is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#9,611
“font” frequency rank
#48,244
“fou” frequency rank
57855
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature font fou
Definition A receptacle in a church for holy water, especially one used in baptism. Drunk.

Letter map: font vs fou

Shared letters muted; letters that set font and fou apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
font
3 ch
fou

Role in the sentence - font and fou

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: font is anoun and fouanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 57855, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

font is recorded at frequency rank #9,611, classified as anoun, pronounced /fɒnt/. 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 57855, this pair ranks #116,467 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of font vs fou

Shared letters: fo. Private to "font": nt. Private to "fou": u.

"font" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "fou" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fontffont · fnot · fonnt · fontt · fotn · ofnt

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "font" and "fou" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "font" is a noun and "fou" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "font" or "fou"?
"font" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,611 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.

After this comparison

You've compared "font" and "fou". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "font" 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 #116,467 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "font" 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 #116,467 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