Which to use
“font” and “fouet” are a confusable French pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #281
- “font” frequency rank
- #9,837
- “fouet” frequency rank
- 10118
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | font | fouet |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | ou Source, fontaine. | Cordelette de chanvre ou de cuir, qui est attachée à une baguette, à un bâton, et dont on se sert pour conduire et pour châtier les chevaux et autres animaux, voire, dans certains pays ou à certaines époques, pour punir une personne condamnée. |
Where the eye mixes font and fouet
Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. font runs 4 letters (CVCC) against fouet's 5 (CVVVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.
Look-alike desk: font vs fouet
A purely visual mix-up. font (\fɔ̃\) and fouet (\fwɛ\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 10118, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
font is recorded at frequency rank #281, classified as anoun, pronounced \fɔ̃\. fouet is at rank #9,837, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fwɛ\.
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 10118, this pair ranks #414,153 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.
Orthographic DNA of font vs fouet
Shared letters: fot. Private to "font": n. Private to "fouet": eu.
"font" · 4 letters · shape CVCC · "fouet" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC
Known mistypes of this pair
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "font" and "fouet" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary French text, does "font" or "fouet" show up more?
Useful next steps
Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.
- Full dictionary entry for "font" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "fouet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #414,153 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "font" and "fouet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fouet vs fouets". 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 #414,153 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.