doi vs du, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“doi” is an adjective and “du” is an article - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,038
“doi” frequency rank: #17
“du” frequency rank: 27055
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	doi	du
Definition	Cas sujet de deus.	Une quantité indéfinie de. Note d’usage : Utilisé avec un nom indénombrable.

Letter map: doi vs du

Shared letters muted; letters that set doi and du apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

doi

2 ch

Part-of-speech tell for doi / du

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: doi is anadjective and duanarticle. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27055, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

doi is recorded at frequency rank #27,038, classified as anadj. du is at rank #17, tagged as anarticle, pronounced \dy\.

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 27055, this pair ranks #331,333 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of doi vs du

Shared letters: d. Private to "doi": io. Private to "du": u.

"doi" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "du" · 2 letters · shape CV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "doi" for "du" ever safe?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "doi" is an adjective and "du" an article, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary French text, does "doi" or "du" show up more?

"du" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #17 in our French list, against #27,038 for "doi". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "doi" and "du".

Full dictionary entry for "doi" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "du" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #331,333 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"doi" and "du" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "DCI vs doi". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #331,333 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.