fons vs font, What's the Difference?

Which to use

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

#43,445
“fons” frequency rank: #281
“font” frequency rank: 43726
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	fons	font
Definition	Fonds (patrimoine).	ou Source, fontaine.

Letter map: fons vs font

Shared letters muted; letters that set fons and font apart highlighted. Shared run: 3.

4 ch

fons

4 ch

font

Pair insight - fons / font

fons and font are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by a single letter - s in “fons” becomes t in “font”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 43726, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fons is recorded at frequency rank #43,445, classified as anoun. font is at rank #281, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fɔ̃\.

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 43726, this pair ranks #215,898 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of fons vs font

Shared letters: fno. Private to "fons": s. Private to "font": t.

"fons" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "font" · 4 letters · shape CVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

fons ← ffons · fnos · fonns · fonss · fosn · ofns
font ← ffont · fnot · fonnt · fontt · fotn · ofnt

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "fons" for "font" ever safe?

No. They differ by a single letter - s in “fons” becomes t in “font”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.

In ordinary French text, does "fons" or "font" show up more?

"font" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #281 in our French list, against #43,445 for "fons". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

After this comparison

You've compared "fons" and "font". Here's where to go from here.

Full dictionary entry for "fons" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "font" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #215,898 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"fons" and "font" 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 #215,898 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.