furetvsfuyezWhat's the difference?

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

Which to use

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

#28,567
“furet” frequency rank
#30,620
“fuyez” frequency rank
59187
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

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

Where the eye mixes furet and fuyez

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 3 letters in sequence. furet (CVCVC) and fuyez (CVVVC) run the same length but a different consonant-vowel pattern - the shape difference is usually the fastest tell.

5 ch
furet
5 ch
fuyez

Visual trap between furet and fuyez

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: furet is \fy.ʁɛ\ while fuyez is \fɥi.je\. 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 (noun vs verb), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59187, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

furet is recorded at frequency rank #28,567, classified as anoun, pronounced \fy.ʁɛ\. fuyez is at rank #30,620, tagged as averb, pronounced \fɥi.je\.

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 59187, this pair ranks #104,573 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of furet vs fuyez

Shared letters: efu. Private to "furet": rt. Private to "fuyez": yz.

"furet" · 5 letters · shape CVCVC  ·  "fuyez" · 5 letters · shape CVVVC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • furet ← ffuret · fruet · fuert · furett · furret · furte · ufret
  • fuyez ← ffuyez · fueyz · fuyezz · fuyyez · fuyze · fyuez · ufyez

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "furet" for "fuyez" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "furet" is a noun and "fuyez" a verb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "furet" vs "fuyez" - which ranks higher?
"furet" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #28,567 in our French list, against #30,620 for "fuyez". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

What to do next

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

  • Full dictionary entry for "furet" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "fuyez" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #104,573 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "furet" and "fuyez" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "filez vs fuyez". 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 #104,573 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