Which to use
“fou” is an adjective and “foy” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.
- #48,244
- “fou” frequency rank
- #36,566
- “foy” frequency rank
- 84810
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | fou | foy |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Drunk. | Faith, allegiance. |
Letter map: fou vs foy
Shared letters muted; letters that set fou and foy apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. fou and foy follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVV). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.
Part-of-speech tell for fou / foy
Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fou is anadjective and foyanoun. On the page they differ by a single letter - u in “fou” becomes y in “foy”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 84810, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
fou is recorded at frequency rank #48,244, classified as anadj. foy is at rank #36,566, 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 84810, this pair ranks #11,436 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of fou vs foy
Shared letters: fo. Private to "fou": u. Private to "foy": y.
"fou" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "foy" · 3 letters · shape CVV
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "fou" and "foy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "fou" or "foy" show up more?
What to do next
You've compared "fou" and "foy". Here's where to go from here.
- Full dictionary entry for "fou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "foy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #11,436 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "fou" and "foy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "FOMO vs fou". Nearby pair
Confusion rank #11,436 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.