fogvsfontWhat's the difference?

Which to use

“fog” and “font” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.

#46,768
“fog” frequency rank
#281
“font” frequency rank
47049
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fog font
Definition Brouillard, brume. ou Source, fontaine.

Where the eye mixes fog and font

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence.

3 ch
fog
4 ch
font

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

A purely visual mix-up. fog (\fɔɡ\) and font (\fɔ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 47049, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fog is recorded at frequency rank #46,768, classified as anoun, pronounced \fɔɡ\. font is at rank #281, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fɔ̃\.

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 47049, this pair ranks #190,059 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fog vs font

Shared letters: fo. Private to "fog": g. Private to "font": nt.

"fog" · 3 letters · shape CVC  ·  "font" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fontffont · fnot · fonnt · fontt · fotn · ofnt

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "fog" and "font" be used interchangeably?
No. They are said differently (\fɔɡ\ versus \fɔ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Which is more common, "fog" or "font"?
"font" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #281 in our French list, against #46,768 for "fog". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

You've compared "fog" and "font". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fog" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "font" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #190,059 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fog" and "font" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fee vs fog". 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

PlainSpell is a reference corpus, not spelling advice. Verify unusual forms in context.

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

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list