footvsfouWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#1,426
“foot” frequency rank
#48,244
“fou” frequency rank
49670
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foot fou
Definition A biological structure found in many animals that is used for locomotion and that is frequently a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg. Drunk.

Letter map: foot vs fou

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

4 ch
foot
3 ch
fou

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foot is anoun and fouanadjective. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49670, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foot is recorded at frequency rank #1,426, classified as anoun, pronounced /fʊt/. 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 49670, this pair ranks #181,439 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foot vs fou

Shared letters: fo. Private to "foot": t. Private to "fou": u.

"foot" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "fou" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • footffoot · foott · fot · foto · ofot

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "foot" and "fou" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foot" is a noun and "fou" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "foot" or "fou"?
"foot" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,426 in our English list, against #48,244 for "fou". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list