kovskofiWhat's the difference?

Which to use

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

#9,864
“ko” frequency rank
#49,178
“kofi” frequency rank
59042
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature ko kofi
Definition Configuration cyclique de pions, si fréquente que des règles spécifiques la traitent. Café.

Letter map: ko vs kofi

Shared letters muted; letters that set ko and kofi apart highlighted. Shared run: 2. ko runs 2 letters (CV) against kofi's 4 (CVCV) - the length gap alone is often enough to separate them once you know to check it.

2 ch
ko
4 ch
kofi

Spelling & dictionary notes on ko vs kofi

ko and kofi are indexed as a confusable French pair. We have no recorded pronunciation or part of speech for both members, so the spelling overlap is what we can show you: they differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ko” sits inside “kofi”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 59042, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

ko is recorded at frequency rank #9,864, classified as anoun, pronounced \ko\. kofi is at rank #49,178, tagged as anoun.

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 59042, this pair ranks #105,395 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - among the most confusable pairs.

Orthographic DNA of ko vs kofi

Shared letters: ko. Private to "ko": -. Private to "kofi": fi.

"ko" · 2 letters · shape CV  ·  "kofi" · 4 letters · shape CVCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • kofi ← kfoi · kkofi · koif · okfi

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "ko" for "kofi" ever safe?
No. They differ by 2 extra letter(s) - “ko” sits inside “kofi”, but the dictionary glosses above give them different meanings, so swapping one for the other changes what the sentence says.
Which is more common, "ko" or "kofi"?
"ko" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #9,864 in our French list, against #49,178 for "kofi". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "ko" and "kofi". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "ko" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "kofi" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #105,395 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "ko" and "kofi" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "kofi vs kom". 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 #105,395 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