frôlevsfrontWhich spelling fits?

Which to use

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

#23,559
“frôle” frequency rank
#1,393
“front” frequency rank
24952
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature frôle front
Definition Nom vulgaire du chèvrefeuille des Alpes et de l'arbousier commun (Arbustus unedo). Partie antérieure de quelque chose. → voir de front

Where the eye mixes frôle and front

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 2 letters in sequence. frôle (CCVCV) and front (CCVCC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
frôle
5 ch
front

Look-alike desk: frôle vs front

A purely visual mix-up. frôle (\fʁol\) and front (\fʁɔ̃\) are said differently, so reading them aloud is the quickest way to catch the wrong one. On the page they stay close: they share most of their letters but differ in 3 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 24952, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

frôle is recorded at frequency rank #23,559, classified as anoun, pronounced \fʁol\. front is at rank #1,393, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fʁɔ̃\.

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 24952, this pair ranks #343,612 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of frôle vs front

Shared letters: fr. Private to "frôle": elô. Private to "front": not.

"frôle" · 5 letters · shape CCVCV  ·  "front" · 5 letters · shape CCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • front ← ffront · fornt · frnot · fronnt · frontt · frotn · frront · rfont

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "frôle" for "front" ever safe?
No. They are said differently (\fʁol\ versus \fʁɔ̃\) and carry different meanings; reading the sentence aloud is usually enough to catch the wrong one.
Frequency check: "frôle" vs "front" - which ranks higher?
"front" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #1,393 in our French list, against #23,559 for "frôle". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Pronunciation already separates them, if the page still looks alike, the dictionary links below settle it.

  • Full dictionary entry for "frôle" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "front" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #343,612 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "frôle" and "front" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "frôle vs fronce". 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 #343,612 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