follvsfortTell them apart

Which to use

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

#35,043
“foll” frequency rank
#380
“fort” frequency rank
35423
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foll fort
Definition Fou. Costaud, robuste, vigoureux.

Where the eye mixes foll and fort

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. foll and fort 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
fort

Look-alike desk: foll vs fort

A purely visual mix-up. foll (\ˈfɔlː\) and fort (\fɔʁ\) 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 35423, 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\. fort is at rank #380, tagged as anadj, pronounced \fɔʁ\.

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 35423, this pair ranks #276,862 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foll vs fort

Shared letters: fo. Private to "foll": l. Private to "fort": rt.

"foll" · 4 letters · shape CVCC  ·  "fort" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foll ← ffoll · flol · ofll
  • fort ← ffort · forrt · fortt · fotr · frot · ofrt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foll" for "fort" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\ˈfɔlː\ versus \fɔʁ\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "foll" vs "fort" - which ranks higher?
"fort" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #380 in our French list, against #35,043 for "foll". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foll" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fort" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #276,862 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foll" and "fort" 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 #276,862 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