forayvsFrauTell them apart

Which to use

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

#27,464
“foray” frequency rank
#26,434
“Frau” frequency rank
53898
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foray Frau
Definition A sudden or irregular incursion in border warfare; hence, any irregular incursion for war or spoils; a raid. Used as a courtesy title before the surname of a (typically married) German-speaking woman.

Letter map: foray vs Frau

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

5 ch
foray
4 ch
Frau

Pair insight - foray / Frau

foray and Frau 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 53898, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foray is recorded at frequency rank #27,464, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈfɒɹ.eɪ/. Frau is at rank #26,434, tagged as anoun.

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 53898, this pair ranks #145,286 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foray vs Frau

Shared letters: afr. Private to "foray": oy. Private to "Frau": u.

"foray" · 5 letters · shape CVCVV  ·  "Frau" · 4 letters · shape CCVV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foray ← fforay · foary · forayy · forray · forya · froay · ofray
  • Frau ← faru · ffrau · frrau · frua · rfau

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "foray" and "Frau" mean the same thing in a sentence?
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.
Which is more common, "foray" or "Frau"?
"Frau" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #26,434 in our English list, against #27,464 for "foray". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Pair "foray" vs "Frau" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foray" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Frau" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #145,286 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foray" and "Frau" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fou vs Frau". 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 #145,286 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