foinsvsFosTell them apart

Quick tell: foins is a noun, Fos is a name, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“foins” is a noun and “Fos” is a name - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#48,534
“foins” frequency rank
#33,268
“Fos” frequency rank
81802
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foins Fos
Definition Pluriel de foin. Commune française, située dans le département de la Haute-Garonne.

Letter map: foins vs Fos

Shared letters muted; letters that set foins and Fos apart highlighted. Shared run: 3. foins runs 5 letters (CVVCC) against Fos's 3 (CVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

5 ch
foins
3 ch
Fos

Part-of-speech tell for foins / Fos

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foins is anoun and Fosaname. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 81802, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foins is recorded at frequency rank #48,534, classified as anoun, pronounced \fwɛ̃\. Fos is at rank #33,268, tagged as aname.

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 81802, this pair ranks #18,012 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of foins vs Fos

Shared letters: fos. Private to "foins": in. Private to "Fos": -.

"foins" · 5 letters · shape CVVCC  ·  "Fos" · 3 letters · shape CVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foinsffoins · fions · foinns · foinss · foisn · fonis · ofins

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foins" for "Fos" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foins" is a noun and "Fos" a name, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "foins" vs "Fos" - which ranks higher?
"Fos" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #33,268 in our French list, against #48,534 for "foins". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "foins" and "Fos".

  • Full dictionary entry for "foins" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "Fos" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #18,012 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foins" and "Fos" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foies vs foins". 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 #18,012 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