fouléesvsfoulerConfusable pair

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

Which to use

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

#46,180
“foulées” frequency rank
#29,779
“fouler” frequency rank
75959
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foulées fouler
Definition Traces légères que la bête laisse de son pied, en passant sur l’herbe ou sur les feuilles. Presser quelque chose qui cède, avec les pieds, les mains ou à l’aide d’un mécanisme.

Same sound, different letters: foulées vs fouler

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 5 letters. foulées runs 7 letters (CVVCVVC) against fouler's 6 (CVVCVC) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

7 ch
foulées
6 ch
fouler

Same sound, different spelling - foulées / fouler

Say them out loud and nothing separates them: foulées and fouler carry the same recorded pronunciation, \fu.le\. Grammar is what tells them apart: one is anoun, the other averb, so most sentences will only accept one of them. They differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 75959, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foulées is recorded at frequency rank #46,180, classified as anoun, pronounced \fu.le\. fouler is at rank #29,779, tagged as averb, pronounced \fu.le\.

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 75959, this pair ranks #32,488 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of foulées vs fouler

Shared letters: eflou. Private to "foulées": sé. Private to "fouler": r.

"foulées" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVVC  ·  "fouler" · 6 letters · shape CVVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fouler ← ffouler · foluer · fouelr · foulerr · fouller · foulre · fuoler · ofuler

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "foulées" for "fouler" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "foulées" is a noun and "fouler" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary French text, does "foulées" or "fouler" show up more?
"fouler" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #29,779 in our French list, against #46,180 for "foulées". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

"foulées" and "fouler" share a sound, keep the gloss open, then jump to the headword or a nearby trap.

  • Full dictionary entry for "foulées" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fouler" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #32,488 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foulées" and "fouler" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fouets vs foulées". 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 #32,488 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