FeevsféruWhat's the difference?

Quick tell: Fee is a noun, féru is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“Fee” is a noun and “féru” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#49,653
“Fee” frequency rank
#40,777
“féru” frequency rank
90430
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature Fee féru
Definition Fée. Qui est blessé, frappé de quelque chose.

Where the eye mixes Fee and féru

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 1 letter in sequence. Fee runs 3 letters (CVV) against féru's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

3 ch
Fee
4 ch
féru

Look-alike desk: Fee vs féru

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: Fee is \feː\ while féru is \fe.ʁy\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they differ by 1 letter(s) in length, and the parts of speech differ too (noun vs adjective), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 90430, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

Fee is recorded at frequency rank #49,653, classified as anoun, pronounced \feː\. féru is at rank #40,777, tagged as anadj, pronounced \fe.ʁy\.

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 90430, this pair ranks #4,799 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of Fee vs féru

Shared letters: f. Private to "Fee": e. Private to "féru": rué.

"Fee" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "féru" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "Fee" for "féru" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "Fee" is a noun and "féru" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "Fee" or "féru" show up more?
"féru" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #40,777 in our French list, against #49,653 for "Fee". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "Fee" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "féru" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #4,799 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "Fee" and "féru" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fee vs FPR". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #4,799 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list