foovsfoutConfusable pair

Quick tell: foo is a noun, fout is a verb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“foo” is a noun and “fout” is a verb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#43,447
“foo” frequency rank
#3,403
“fout” frequency rank
46850
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foo fout
Definition Variable métasyntaxique en programmation informatique. Troisième personne du singulier de l’indicatif présent de foutre.

Letter map: foo vs fout

Shared letters muted; letters that set foo and fout apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

3 ch
foo
4 ch
fout

Part-of-speech tell for foo / fout

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: foo is anoun and foutaverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 46850, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foo is recorded at frequency rank #43,447, classified as anoun, pronounced \fu\. fout is at rank #3,403, tagged as averb.

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 46850, this pair ranks #191,572 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foo vs fout

Shared letters: fo. Private to "foo": -. Private to "fout": tu.

"foo" · 3 letters · shape CVV  ·  "fout" · 4 letters · shape CVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foutffout · fotu · foutt · fuot · ofut

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "foo" and "fout" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foo" is a noun and "fout" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "foo" vs "fout" - which ranks higher?
"fout" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #3,403 in our French list, against #43,447 for "foo". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pair "foo" vs "fout" is on the table, pick a follow-up below.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foo" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fout" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #191,572 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foo" and "fout" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "Fee vs foo". 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 #191,572 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