foutaisvsfoutaitConfusable pair

Which to use

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

#28,175
“foutais” frequency rank
#22,275
“foutait” frequency rank
50450
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature foutais foutait
Definition Première personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de foutre. Troisième personne du singulier de l’imparfait de l’indicatif de foutre.

Same sound, different letters: foutais vs foutait

Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 6 letters. foutais and foutait follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVVCVVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

7 ch
foutais
7 ch
foutait

Ear matches; page differs - foutais and foutait

This is the hard kind. foutais and foutait are pronounced identically (\fu.tɛ\) and both work as averb. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by a single letter - s in “foutais” becomes t in “foutait”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 50450, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

foutais is recorded at frequency rank #28,175, classified as averb, pronounced \fu.tɛ\. foutait is at rank #22,275, tagged as averb, pronounced \fu.tɛ\.

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 50450, this pair ranks #162,528 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of foutais vs foutait

Shared letters: afiotu. Private to "foutais": s. Private to "foutait": -.

"foutais" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVVC  ·  "foutait" · 7 letters · shape CVVCVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • foutais ← ffoutais · fotuais · fouatis · foutaiss · foutasi · foutias · fouttais · fuotais
  • foutait ← ffoutait · fotuait · fouatit · foutaitt · foutati · foutiat · fouttait · fuotait

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "foutais" and "foutait" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No. They are pronounced the same (\fu.tɛ\), which is exactly why they get swapped in writing, but the dictionary meanings above are different, and pronunciation is no guide here.
In ordinary French text, does "foutais" or "foutait" show up more?
"foutait" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #22,275 in our French list, against #28,175 for "foutais". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "foutais" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "foutait" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #162,528 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "foutais" and "foutait" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "fortis vs foutais". 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 #162,528 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