fovsfoyTell them apart

Quick tell: fo is a noun, foy is a pronoun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fo” is a noun and “foy” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#9,484
“fo” frequency rank
#14,677
“foy” frequency rank
24161
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fo foy
Definition Folio. rien, aucun problème.

Letter map: fo vs foy

Shared letters muted; letters that set fo and foy apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

2 ch
fo
3 ch
foy

Part-of-speech tell for fo / foy

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fo is anoun and foyapronoun. On the page they differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “fo” sits inside “foy”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24161, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fo is recorded at frequency rank #9,484, classified as anoun, pronounced \fɔ.ljo\. foy is at rank #14,677, tagged as apron.

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 24161, this pair ranks #348,224 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of fo vs foy

Shared letters: fo. Private to "fo": -. Private to "foy": y.

"fo" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "foy" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fo" for "foy" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fo" is a noun and "foy" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "fo" or "foy" show up more?
"fo" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,484 in our French list, against #14,677 for "foy". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "fo" and "foy". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foy" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #348,224 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fo" and "foy" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fee vs foy". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #348,224 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