follvsfollesConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#35,043
“foll” frequency rank
#10,503
“folles” frequency rank
45546
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foll folles
Definition Fou. Féminin pluriel de fou.

Same sound, different letters: foll vs folles

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 4 letters. foll runs 4 letters (CVCC) against folles's 6 (CVCCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

4 ch
foll
6 ch
folles

Same sound, different spelling - foll / folles

This is the hard kind. foll and folles are pronounced identically (\ˈfɔlː\) and both work as anadjective. 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) - “foll” sits inside “folles”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 45546, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foll is recorded at frequency rank #35,043, classified as anadj, pronounced \ˈfɔlː\. folles is at rank #10,503, tagged as anadj, pronounced \fɔl\.

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 45546, this pair ranks #201,919 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foll vs folles

Shared letters: flo. Private to "foll": -. Private to "folles": es.

"foll" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "folles" · 6 letters · shape CVCCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • follffoll · flol · ofll
  • follesffolles · floles · folels · foles · folless · follse · oflles

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "foll" and "folles" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\ˈfɔlː\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
Frequency check: "foll" vs "folles" - which ranks higher?
"folles" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #10,503 in our French list, against #35,043 for "foll". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Sound matches; spelling doesn't. Use the exits below to lock the right form or check a cousin pair.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foll" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "folles" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #201,919 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foll" and "folles" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Feld vs foll". 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 #201,919 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