foivsfoiesWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#1,478
“foi” frequency rank
#47,901
“foies” frequency rank
49379
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foi foies
Definition Croyance aux dogmes de la religion, en Dieu. Pluriel de foie.

Same sound, different letters: foi vs foies

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.

3 ch
foi
5 ch
foies

Same sound, different spelling - foi / foies

This is the hard kind. foi and foies are pronounced identically (\fwa\) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “foi” sits inside “foies”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 49379, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foi is recorded at frequency rank #1,478, classified as anoun, pronounced \fwa\. foies is at rank #47,901, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fwa\.

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 49379, this pair ranks #171,181 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foi vs foies

Shared letters: fio. Private to "foi": -. Private to "foies": es.

"foi" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "foies" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foiesffoies · fioes · foeis · foiess · foise · ofies

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "foi" and "foies" be used interchangeably?
No. They are pronounced the same (\fwa\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Which is more common, "foi" or "foies"?
"foi" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,478 in our French list, against #47,901 for "foies". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've separated the homophone pair "foi" / "foies". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foi" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foies" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #171,181 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foi" and "foies" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foies vs fouets". 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 #171,181 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