flouvsfoutWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: flou is a adjective, fout is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“flou” is an adjective and “fout” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#7,440
“flou” frequency rank
#3,403
“fout” frequency rank
10843
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature flou fout
Definition D'un coloris sans vigueur, qui manque de netteté des contours ou des arêtes. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de foutre.

Letter map: flou vs fout

Shared letters muted; letters that set flou and fout apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch
flou
4 ch
fout

Part-of-speech tell for flou / fout

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: flou is anadjective and foutaverb. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10843, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

flou is recorded at frequency rank #7,440, classified as anadj, pronounced \flu\. fout is at rank #3,403, tagged as averb.

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 10843, this pair ranks #411,462 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of flou vs fout

Shared letters: fou. Private to "flou": l. Private to "fout": t.

"flou" · 4 letters · shape CCVV  ·  "fout" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • floufflou · fllou · folu · lfou
  • foutffout · fotu · foutt · fuot · ofut

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "flou" for "fout" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "flou" is an adjective and "fout" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "flou" or "fout" show up more?
"fout" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,403 in our French list, against #7,440 for "flou". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "flou" and "fout".

  • Full dictionary entry for "flou" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fout" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #411,462 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "flou" and "fout" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "flou vs flour". 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 #411,462 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