fol
\fɔl\
The verdict
“fol” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #23,215) as an adjective. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.
- #23,215
- frequency rank, French
- 3,276
- “F” headwords
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Masculin singulier de fou lorsque le substantif qui suit dans la phrase commence par une voyelle ou un h muet.
Corpus desk
Index FR-fol · fol · French
fol · rank #23,215 · 0 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-MID #23,215
- LEN-MID 3 letters
- VOW-1 1 vowel
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,276
- PHOTO-FINISH Flaubert
Nearest frequency peer: Flaubert (-1 rank slots)
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.
Voisins de fréquence du confusable « fol »
Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous
- fiston
fiston
76,789 corpus weight
- flan
flan
76,788 corpus weight
- Flaubert
Flaubert
76,787 corpus weight
- fol
fol
76,786 corpus weight
- fortunés
fortunés
76,785 corpus weight
- foudres
foudres
76,784 corpus weight
What this shows Les barres placent « fol » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | fol |
| Language | French |
| Part of speech | Adjective |
| IPA | \fɔl\ |
| Letters | 3 |
| Frequency rank | #23,215 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Rang de corpus près des confusables de « fol »
Easy to mix with look-alikes
The spelling risk for fol is neighbouring look-alikes ("ft", "Fs", …), not just typos; it is anadjective pronounced \fɔl\. Frequency #23,215 among 3,276 “F” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.
No misspelling variants are generated for fol in our index, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "ft", "Fs", "FP", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct French form is fol, spelled F-O-L.
Definition
- 1Masculin singulier de fou lorsque le substantif qui suit dans la phrase commence par une voyelle ou un h muet.
- 2Neutre singulier de fou.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how fol appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Un fol espoir, un fol orgueil.
Muserolle.– J’ai eu l’honneur d’être trompé par ma femme. Oh mais ! trompé ! comme vous ne le serez peut-être jamais vous-mêmes. Le Marquis.– Pas de fol orgueil !
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 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Similar French words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "fol", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).