fumezvsfuretTell them apart

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

Which to use

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

#32,824
“fumez” frequency rank
#28,567
“furet” frequency rank
61391
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature fumez furet
Definition Deuxième personne du pluriel du présent de l’indicatif de fumer. Petit carnivore de la famille des mustélidés, forme domestique (Mustela putorius furo) du putois (Mustela putorius putorius).

Where the eye mixes fumez and furet

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. fumez and furet follow the identical consonant-vowel pattern (CVCVC). Same shape at a glance is often the real trap, independent of shared letters.

5 ch
fumez
5 ch
furet

Visual trap between fumez and furet

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: fumez is \fy.me\ while furet is \fy.ʁɛ\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (verb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 61391, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

fumez is recorded at frequency rank #32,824, classified as averb, pronounced \fy.me\. furet is at rank #28,567, tagged as anoun, pronounced \fy.ʁɛ\.

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 61391, this pair ranks #92,545 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of fumez vs furet

Shared letters: efu. Private to "fumez": mz. Private to "furet": rt.

"fumez" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "furet" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • fumezffumez · fmuez · fuemz · fumezz · fummez · fumze · ufmez
  • furetffuret · fruet · fuert · furett · furret · furte · ufret

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "fumez" and "furet" be used interchangeably?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "fumez" is a verb and "furet" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Which is more common, "fumez" or "furet"?
"furet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,567 in our French list, against #32,824 for "fumez". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

Visual near-miss handled. Browse the word pages or a neighbour when the next look-alike shows up.

  • Full dictionary entry for "fumez" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "furet" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #92,545 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "fumez" and "furet" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "filez vs fumez". 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 #92,545 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