foisvsfortisTell them apart

Quick tell: fois is a noun, fortis is an adjective, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“fois” is a noun and “fortis” is an adjective - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#104
“fois” frequency rank
#46,179
“fortis” frequency rank
46283
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fois fortis
Definition Nom qui se joint à un adjectif numéral pour indiquer qu’un fait s’est produit ou s’est répété. Fort, robuste, solide, vigoureux, bien portant.

Letter map: fois vs fortis

Shared letters muted; letters that set fois and fortis apart highlighted. Shared run: 4.

4 ch
fois
6 ch
fortis

Part-of-speech tell for fois / fortis

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: fois is anoun and fortisanadjective. On the page they differ by 2 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46283, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fois is recorded at frequency rank #104, classified as anoun, pronounced \fwa\. fortis is at rank #46,179, tagged as anadj.

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 46283, this pair ranks #196,155 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fois vs fortis

Shared letters: fios. Private to "fois": -. Private to "fortis": rt.

"fois" · 4 letters · shape CVVC  ·  "fortis" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foisffois · fios · foiss · fosi · ofis
  • fortisffortis · forits · forrtis · fortiss · fortsi · fotris · ofrtis

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "fois" and "fortis" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fois" is a noun and "fortis" an adjective, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "fois" or "fortis" show up more?
"fois" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #104 in our French list, against #46,179 for "fortis". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

Useful next steps

You've compared "fois" and "fortis". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fois" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fortis" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #196,155 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fois" and "fortis" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fortis vs furtifs". 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 #196,155 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