fone

noun

"fone" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“fone” is uncommon English (frequency #78,608 among 2,507 “F” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

#78,608
frequency rank, English
2,507
“F” headwords

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - plural of foe

Corpus desk

Index EN-fone · fone · English

fone · rank #78,608 · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-RARE #78,608
  • LEN-MID 4 letters
  • VOW-2 2 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 2,507
  • PHOTO-FINISH Fordyce

Nearest frequency peer: Fordyce (+1 rank slots)

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Long-tail ranks near “fone”

Sparse band: bars invert rank so rarer forms read shorter

corpus weight

What this shows Long-tail view: where “fone” sits against similarly uncommon English ranks.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026
Key facts for fone
PropertyValue
Headwordfone
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters4
Frequency rank#78,608
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “fone” in English

Word frequency stretches from the small set of words we reach for constantly (left) out to the long tail barely used once in a while (right).fonefalls in this rarity band:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

Ticks step logarithmically, so each one marks a roughly tenfold drop in how often the word turns up. Rare peers in the same band: “Fordyce” (#78,609), “foreseeing” (#78,610), “folktale” (#78,605). Among 2,507 “F” headwords, “fone” is #78,608. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

fone is uncommon English at frequency #78,608 among 2,507 “F” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "plural of foe".

fone has no tracked misspelling variants, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our dataset records no confusable match here, since no other headword is close enough in sound or shape to pair with it.

This headword's origin isn't recorded in our source data, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct English form is fone, spelled F-O-N-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    plural of foe

Recorded use

Wiktionary example

These source excerpts show how fone appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Despair made some run headlong gainst their fone...

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "fone"?
"fone" is spelled F-O-N-E.
What does "fone" mean?
As a noun, "fone" means: plural of foe
What language does "fone" come from?
"fone" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar English words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "fone", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list