foisonvsfoulonTell them apart

Which to use

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

#37,817
“foison” frequency rank
#40,772
“foulon” frequency rank
78589
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foison foulon
Definition Très grande abondance. Artisan qui foule, qui apprête les draps et autres étoffes de laine.

Where the eye mixes foison and foulon

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence. foison and foulon follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

6 ch
foison
6 ch
foulon

Visual trap between foison and foulon

A purely visual mix-up. foison (\fwa.zɔ̃\) and foulon (\fu.lɔ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78589, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foison is recorded at frequency rank #37,817, classified as anoun, pronounced \fwa.zɔ̃\. foulon is at rank #40,772, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fu.lɔ̃\.

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 78589, this pair ranks #25,353 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of foison vs foulon

Shared letters: fno. Private to "foison": is. Private to "foulon": lu.

"foison" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC  ·  "foulon" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foison ← ffoison · fioson · foiosn · foisno · foisonn · foisson · fosion · ofison
  • foulon ← ffoulon · foluon · foullon · foulno · foulonn · fouoln · fuolon · ofulon

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foison" for "foulon" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\fwa.zɔ̃\ versus \fu.lɔ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "foison" vs "foulon" - which ranks higher?
"foison" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #37,817 in our French list, against #40,772 for "foulon". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "foison" and "foulon" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foison" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foulon" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,353 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foison" and "foulon" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foulon vs frelon". 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 #25,353 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