Which to use
“fowl” and “foy” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #28,924
- “fowl” frequency rank
- #36,566
- “foy” frequency rank
- 65490
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | fowl | foy |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A bird hunted or kept for food, grouped into landfowl (order Galliformes), also called gamefowl, and waterfowl (order Anseriformes: ducks, geese, swans, etc.), which together form the clade Galloanserae. | Faith, allegiance. |
Letter map: fowl vs foy
Shared letters muted; letters that set fowl and foy apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. fowl runs 4 letters (CVCC) against foy's 3 (CVV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Pair insight - fowl / foy
fowl and foy 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 65490, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
fowl is recorded at frequency rank #28,924, classified as anoun, pronounced /faʊl/. 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 65490, this pair ranks #72,478 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.
Orthographic DNA of fowl vs foy
Shared letters: fo. Private to "fowl": lw. Private to "foy": y.
"fowl" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "foy" · 3 letters · shape CVV
Known mistypes of this pair
- fowl ← ffowl · fowll · fowwl · fwol · ofwl
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "fowl" and "foy" mean the same thing in a sentence?
Which is more common, "fowl" or "foy"?
Useful next steps
Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "fowl" and "foy".
- Full dictionary entry for "fowl" 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 #72,478 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "fowl" and "foy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "FOMO vs foy". 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 #72,478 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.