lay vs lui, What's the Difference?

Which to use

“lay” is an adjective and “lui” is a pronoun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#27,500
“lay” frequency rank: #68
“lui” frequency rank: 27568
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	lay	lui
Definition	Variante de lé.	Pronom clitique de la troisième personne du singulier épicène du complément d’objet indirect.

Letter map: lay vs lui

Shared letters muted; letters that set lay and lui apart highlighted. Shared run: 1.

3 ch

lay

3 ch

lui

Grammar separator: lay vs lui

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: lay is anadjective and luiapronoun. On the page they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 27568, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

lay is recorded at frequency rank #27,500, classified as anadj. lui is at rank #68, tagged as apron, pronounced \lɥi\.

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 27568, this pair ranks #328,137 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.

Orthographic DNA of lay vs lui

Shared letters: l. Private to "lay": ay. Private to "lui": iu.

"lay" · 3 letters · shape CVV · "lui" · 3 letters · shape CVV

Frequently Asked Questions

Can "lay" and "lui" be used interchangeably?

No - they are not even the same part of speech. "lay" is an adjective and "lui" a pronoun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.

In ordinary French text, does "lay" or "lui" show up more?

"lui" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #68 in our French list, against #27,500 for "lay". That is a wide gap, so in ordinary text the rarer spelling is the one worth double-checking.

What to do next

Done with this confusable. These links stay specific to "lay" and "lui".

Full dictionary entry for "lay" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
Full dictionary entry for "lui" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
This pair ranks #328,137 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
"lay" and "lui" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "lay vs lep". Nearby pair

Confusion rank #328,137 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.