follvsfonsWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: foll is a adjective, fons is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

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

#35,043
“foll” frequency rank
#43,445
“fons” frequency rank
78488
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foll fons
Definition Fou. Fonds (patrimoine).

Letter map: foll vs fons

Shared letters muted; letters that set foll and fons apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. foll and fons follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

4 ch
foll
4 ch
fons

Part-of-speech tell for foll / fons

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foll is anadjective and fonsanoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 78488, 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\. fons is at rank #43,445, tagged as anoun.

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 78488, this pair ranks #25,605 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of foll vs fons

Shared letters: fo. Private to "foll": l. Private to "fons": ns.

"foll" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "fons" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foll ← ffoll · flol · ofll
  • fons ← ffons · fnos · fonns · fonss · fosn · ofns

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "foll" and "fons" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foll" is an adjective and "fons" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "foll" or "fons" show up more?
"foll" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #35,043 in our French list, against #43,445 for "fons". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Pair "foll" vs "fons" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foll" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #25,605 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foll" and "fons" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "foins vs fons". 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 #25,605 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